5 Steps To Protect Your Business From Cyber Crime

A Seattle company was recently broken into, and a stash of old laptops were stolen.  Just a typical everyday crime by typical everyday thieves.  These laptops weren’t even being used by anyone in the company.  The crime turned out to be anything but ordinary when those same thieves (cyber-criminals) used data from the laptops to obtain information used to siphon money out of the company via fraudulent payroll transactions.  On top of stealing money, they also managed to steal employee identities.

Another small company was hacked by another “company” sharing the same high-rise office building with them.  Management only became aware of the theft once they started seeing unusual financial transactions in their bank accounts.  Even then, they didn’t know if there was internal embezzlement or external cybertheft.  It turned out to be cyber-theft.  The thief in this case drove a Mercedes and wore a Rolex watch… and looked like anyone else walking in and out of their building.  Welcome to the age of cybercrime.

You Are Their Favorite Target

One of the biggest issues facing small businesses in the fight against cybercrime is the lack of a cyber security plan.  While 83% lack a formal plan, over 69% lack even an informal one.  Only ½ of small business owners believe that cybercrime will never affect them.  In fact, small businesses are cybercriminals favorite target!  Why?  They’re not prepared and they make it easier on them.

The result?  Cyber-attacks cost SMB’s an average of $188,242 each incident and nearly 2/3’rds of the businesses affected are out of business within 6 months.  (2011 Symantec/NCSA Study)  A separate study by Verizon showed that over 80% of small business cybercrime victims were due to insufficient network security (wireless and password issues ranked highest).  With insecure networks and no formal plan to combat them, we make it easy for them.

How They Attack

The #1 money generating technique these “bad guys” use is to infect your systems with malware so that whenever you (or your employees) visit a website and enter a password (Facebook, bank, payroll, etc.), the malware programs harvest that data and send it  off to the bad guys to do their evil stuff.

They can get to you through physical office break-ins, “wardriving” (compromising defenseless wireless networks) or email phishing scams and harmful websites.  Cyber-criminals are relentless in their efforts, and no one is immune to their tricks.

5 Steps To Protect Your Business

  1. Get Educated. Find out the risks and educate your staff.
  2. Do A Threat Assessment. Examine your firewall, anti-virus protection, and anything connected to your network.  What data is sensitive or subject to data breach laws?
  3. Create A Cyber Security Action Plan. Your plan should include both education and a “fire drill”.
  4. Monitor Consistently. Security is never a one-time activity.  Monitoring 24/7 is critical.
  5. Re-Assess Regularly. New threats emerge all the time and are always changing.  You can only win by staying ahead!

If you’re looking to re-assess your network to see how wide open you may be to cyber criminals and hackers, have WAMS come in to do a Security Assessment. The cost varies firm to firm depending on the size and complexity of your network, but the benefits are ALWAYS worth knowing so that you can better guard yourself against threats. Call us today to schedule yours!

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WAMS, Inc.

The experts at WAMS, Inc. all have a background in the legal industry and understand the software and the demands that come along with it. That’s why all our clients receive a dedicated account manager and engineer with specific planning that works for your business needs. We didn’t break into the tech world to pinch pennies from clients. We go into every partnership to help their business scale gracefully. Your company growth is our company growth, always.