The small stature of your startup business will make it a sitting duck for cybercrime;there’s no denying that. If you don’t want your organization to be blighted by this plight during the earliest stages of its inception, you must take preventive action right away. It’s never too early to safeguard your startup against online threats, which is why you shouldn’t waste any time in putting the advice laid out below into practice.
Here are three ways you can protect your business against cybercrime:
Get to grips with the emerging dangers that you face
It’s all good and well protecting your business against the common threats of cybercrime (malware, hacking, trojan attacks, etc..), but what happens when a new danger strikes? If you want to protect your startup from every angle in this instance, you need to get to grips with ALL the problems that you face.
Here are just four emerging cybercrime trends that you should be aware of:
- IoT attacks
- DDoS
- Smartphone spear phishing
- AI algorithm threats
Train your workforce
However, innocuous, or well-intentioned their actions may be, your staff members could compromise your cybersecurity at any second if they aren’t trained to spot and handle certain data attacks. To ensure that your employees aren’t making life ten times harder for you in your attempt to protect your business against online threats, you simply must teach them all about the dangers of cybercrime.
More to the point, you must make them aware of shadow IT. This refers to a specific situation in which your workers access compromised apps, services, and websites while connected to your company Internet connection and, in turn, run the risk of handing your sensitive data over to dangerous external forces. If you want to find out more about shadow IT, the exact danger that it poses, and what you can do to deal with it, be sure to check out Proofpoint.
Encrypt your sensitive data
As your business grows, so will the amount of sensitive data that you store on your computer systems. Should this data ever be comprised and accessed by a cybercriminal, you will be sure to face several headaches in the future. For one, your finances could undergo an extensive amount of damage if you are held to ransom over the return of your sensitive information. Alternatively, your reputation and brand could take a serious hit if your customer data is made public — the hacking might not be your fault, but your consumers will still blame you if their private information gets into the wrong hands!
Quite simply, it would be best if you went above and beyond to ensure that your sensitive data is protected by encrypting it. Once you invest in a complete encryption solution, your data will be scrambled and, in turn, be made unreadable for external sources. This will work to keep your information safe it in all of its states — whether it’s at rest or in transit, you won’t have to worry about your data being hacked into once it’s been encrypted.
