Hiscox, the insurer, has found that nearly 50% of SMB’s believe their businesses are not realistic targets for cyber-crime. This is a worry. The Ponemon Institute found that employee negligence was the root cause of the majority of cyber crime incidents. Furthermore, 47% of SME/SMB businesses have been targeted. These could be elaborate ransomware attacks to email phishing breaches, all of which are real threats to SMB’s in today’s digital landscape.

Five Steps to SMB Cybersecurity Excellence

1. Maintain Your Software Patch Updates – SMEs tend to forget about patch updates as they have a billion and one things to do. However, to help protect your software, always update with the latest security patches – in fact build a weekly regime by creating a patch update culture that becomes a sound business habit.
2. Responsible User Admin Rights Deployment – A small business could have three staff (including the owner). They could have three computers all connected to the same shared cloud drive. The problem here is that if the proper admin privileges have been wrongly assigned all your staff can access your data. You need to apply admin privilege rights to the right people thus helping you to protect your business.
3. Backup and Recovery Systems – All businesses need a fail-safe. The research, noted above, has found that 51 percent of micro businesses do not have adequate backup procedures. If your business is attacked by ransomware, a full backup could protect your business.
4. Staff Education Campaigns – Always promote good (and on-going) cyber-security culture. By education staff, highlighting the threat and educating staff about the correct process, cyber crime incidences can be reduced.
5. Use private, not public, WIFI for business – Always educate your staff and if they’re on the road, give them the means to buy protected security so they can avoid public WIFI space. Public WIFI is constantly attacked and malicious code could help bring down your IT structure. Always educate users about the importance of safe and secure broadband connectivity.