As with keeping anything safe – your home, your car – protecting your organisation from cybercrime starts with you. The first thing to do is to get clued up on what cybercrime is. The next step is to find out how cyber protection can guard your business and the people who work there from cybercrime.
What is cybercrime?
Cybercrime is any criminal activity that involves computers and the digital equipment and networks that computers connect to. Cybercriminals will direct their activities towards businesses and organisations for a number of reasons.
1. Customer data
One of the biggest targets for business related cybercrime is the individual personal and financial data of an organisation’s customer database. This can include customer payment details, and the selling on of customer data to others.
2. Commercial data
Cybercriminals will target businesses to learn about corporate secrets relevant to their industry, including highly sensitive information, such research and development projects that might be in the works. They will then sell this data onto interested prices at an extortionate price.
3. Money theft
Though there are many security methods in place to protect business bank accounts (e.g. dual-factor authentication), cybercriminal will target businesses they have identified to have poor cyber protection and can, in some cases, still successfully access their money.
How to protect your business from cybercrime
To protect your organisation and the individuals who work there from cybercrime, there are several key things you can do.
1. Develop a robust cyber security policy
Ensure you and your staff are educated in cyber security best practices. At PC Comms, we believe cyber security should be established as standard. All our IT support packages include the key features and principles any business needs to be the Cyber Essentials certification. We help to:
- Establish and enforce clear guidelines for data protection in your business.
- Instruct your staff in the correct response to a cyberattack, and how to stay safe online.
- Regularly update our approach to reflect new, emerging threats and technologies (e.g. AI).
2. Educate staff
Cybercrime is always evolving, and so is the way we combat it. Ensure your staff are kept up to date on changes in cybercrime threats by:
- Conducting regular cybersecurity training sessions and awareness programs for all employees.
- Increase awareness about phishing, social engineering, and other common cyberattacks.
3. Have a cyber security plan
Don’t just assume the worst will never happen – otherwise, should cybercrime come calling, your business will find itself completely unprepared.
- Identify and prioritize potential threats and vulnerabilities specific to your business.
- Develop an incident response plan tailored to your business and these threats.
- Regularly test and update your cyber security plan. Ensure all your systems, applications, and security tools are correctly installed with the latest updates.
4. Put cyber security infrastructure and hardware in place
Having a cyber security plan and policy is all well and good – but it won’t count for much if your business doesn’t have the cyber security infrastructure and hardware in place to make it all happen.
- Implement multi-factor authentication for all critical systems and data access points.
- Ensure you set up a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) for remote workers. Protect remote access to your business’s systems with strong authentication and encryption.
- Maintain regular backups of critical data and systems using secure cloud solutions. Store backups securely off-site and frequently test recovery procedures.