With increasing concerns around cyber attacks against businesses of all types, sizes, and in different locations world-wide, business owners must take important steps to protect your business from cyber crimes. Investing time, money, and energy into cybersecurity will go a long way in minimizing costly consequences of breaches that typically result in damages of more than $500,000.
Criminal extortionists who commit these crimes try to benefit from vulnerable business networks and systems by using various methods to steal, destroy, or change your business’ importation information. Securing hardware, backing up data, and using robust firewalls are just a few of many important measures that should be taken to protect your business’ long term financial health and security.
Common Types of Cyber Crimes
There are many different types of cyber attacks, but infecting a device with malware, which may include spyware, viruses, and ransomware attacks, may be one of the most common. The malicious software may be unknowingly accepted into your network by way of a link or email attachment, which then provides the cyber criminals access to sensitive and confidential information, while also disrupting or blocking access to the network for internal users.
Phishing practices also involve fraudulent communications that appear to be coming from reputable sources which may lead to serious data breaches. Hacking is one of the most well-known types of cyber crime as it’s the unauthorized use of a computer network or device to completely shut it down, or otherwise misuse your business’ websites. Below, we provide four ways to protect your business from these cyber crimes and avoid becoming a target.
4 Ways to Protect Your Business
- Invest in cyber security insurance: Every type of business is vulnerable to cyber threats so it’s important to find insurance solutions that will give you and your employees peace of mind if ever you become the victim of a cyber attack. Cyber security insurance will protect your business against financial losses associated with common cyber crimes like phishing, malware, and hacking.
- Encrypt and backup company data: Utilizing the full-disk data encryption software that comes with most operating systems today is one of the most effective ways to prevent cyber criminals from gaining unauthorized access to your company’s sensitive data. By encrypting and then backing up all business data, your business — and its employees and customers — will be protected in the face of a cyber attack.
- Train staff to identify and escalate cyber threats: Educating and empowering employees to understand risky behavior like visiting unsecured websites or clicking on email attachments or links from unknown senders is key to creating a cyber-secure workplace. Discourage password sharing and reuse, restrict network admin rights, and ensure data encryption is performed by qualified personnel.
- Create a cybersecurity attack plan: While taking the steps above to minimize your company’s vulnerability to cyber crimes is important, it’s equally as valuable to design a plan that prepares you and your employees for the worst case scenario. Keep it simple by outlining the most obvious threats that your business faces with sensible solutions and actions that should take place should the need arise.
At Doeren Mayhew Insurance Group, we provide customized insurance solutions that minimize risk in the face of unforeseen threats to your business’ financial health and security. Contact us to learn more about how to protect your business from cyber crimes today.