When big corporate houses are impacted by data breaches, such as the one we have witnessed with Equifax, it hits the headlines. This sort of incident prompts organizations to take proactive measures and boost data security. Most big organizations treat data security with utmost seriousness and they keep investing their resources for keeping their security systems upgraded and up-to-date. Small businesses must realize that even after devoting so much effort and resources toward fortifying security if such corporate houses face a risk, it is quite an easy task for cyber attackers to cause security breaches by bypassing small business security protocols.
An experienced campaigner, Ram Duriseti believes that several small firms are not too concerned about information security or cybersecurity. As such their businesses often are compelled to close down because of their ineptness to contain, tackle, or avoid the attack. Statistics reveal that around 60 percent of small businesses are forced to shut down within just six months of being a victim of a cyber attack or data breach.
The most surprising and intriguing aspect of such a security breach or cyber-attack is that a vast majority of such security breaches could have been avoided. Numerous businesses are victims of planned cyber attacks but more often than not, they are supposed to be crimes of opportunity. Small businesses make certain petty mistakes and unknowingly invite trouble by falling in a trap. Here is a well-thought-out list of common small business security mistakes to avoid.
Ram Duriseti Presents a List of Security Mistakes to Avoid
Mistake: No Security Policy in Place
When you are operating with a small close-knit team, you interact personally and tend to trust everyone and expect all of them to perform according to their knowledge. Often you fail to realize the importance of chalking out a formal and well-defined security policy for your small organization. However, you need to realize that whenever a laptop or a smartphone is lost, it could culminate in a serious security breach and all your clients’ information could be at a risk. You must necessarily come up with a stringent security policy that clearly defines the things to do and the things not to do relating to the IT infrastructure of the firm.
Mistake: Allowing Unattended Access to Your Infrastructure
Just think about those times when you have let some random clients go ahead and access your system for downloading a document by using a pen drive. There have been several occasions when you must have left your laptop or desktop unattended and went for a break not bothering to lock it. There must have been numerous situations when you have allowed a colleague or an outsider to have easy access to the system. Your data certainly would be at a risk in such situations. You must necessarily take full responsibility for your infrastructure’s overall security and it is high time you devoted your attention to chalk out a robust and clear-cut security stratagem.
Mistake: No Steps to Secure the Cloud
Cloud computing proves to be immensely beneficial to small businesses since it facilitates a boost in productivity and now you could relax and be less bothered about your data security. However, you start facing issues when you realize that hired cloud services seem to be unreliable or incompetent in safeguarding your valuable data and information. For instance, your staff must be going on storing data specifically in cloud drives that have been provided by certain email account vendors. You fail to realize that your valuable data that has been stored in such drives have not been fully encrypted. Moreover, they do not seem to be compliant with strict federal mandates. You must rectify this security misstep by ensuring that all your data-in-transit and in-storage must be handled with utmost caution and priority.
Conclusion
Getting ready for data security should not imply simply the installation of antiviruses or higher technical infrastructure. It is all about understanding and appreciating security requirements and even taking proactive steps to combat cyber-attacks in the future.
