Author: David Geer / Source: The Next Web
If the recent cyber attacks have taught us anything, it is that most people are dangerously unprepared for them. Cyber security should be at the forefront of virtually every industry yet it is often treated as an afterthought.
Small businesses are in a particularly disadvantaged position. Even so, many are unaware of the dangers they are already facing. The truth is that an estimated 43 percent of cyber-attacks target small businesses, so there are many lessons to be learnt here.
1.Attacks are random and unpredictable
Cyber-attacks cannot really be predicted, unless we are talking about very specific targets which constantly come under fire. In regards to small businesses, however, cyber-attacks do not have specific patterns and can pretty much come at any point.
Let us take the WannaCry ransomware as an example. On 12th of May 2017, within the course of a single day, the WannaCry ransomware was released into the wild and managed to infect more than 230,000 computers worldwide. In the end, the number rose to more than 300,000.
Even high-profile companies and organizations such as FedEx and the UK’s National Health Service were victims of the attack. No one expected the attack and if it wasn’t for the accidental hero who managed to stop its spread, a lot more computers would have been infected.
You may be familiar with the phrase “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”. The phrase could easily be modified to “eternal vigilance is the price of cyber-security”. When attacks are this random, they should always be expected.
2.Do not assume you are safe
Nowadays, privacy is at a premium. Learning how to protect your privacy and security is a vital skill. If you are a small business, you also have the responsibility of protecting your users.
Perhaps the most common mistake by small businesses in regards to cyber security is that they assume they will not be attacked. For instance, some believe that they are too small to be of any concern to hackers.
This, however, is not always a…
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