Cyber Security Risks For Small Business

Digitalization is the most effective technique for small businesses to reach a wider audience and boost their revenue efficiently. While taking your business to the Internet can be a lucrative decision, it also makes you a target for cyber attackers. 

Several small business owners think that cyber criminals often target large corporations, instead of their enterprises. If you feel the same way, you are mistaken then. 

As per the statistics, cybercriminals attack 70 percent of small corporations. Therefore, it has become necessary for small business owners to understand the cyber security risks to be strong enough to fight against these criminals. 

This article will highlight the potential cyber security risks. On top of that, we will try to give you a solution to prevent encountering these risks within your business. We will also highlight some basic knowledge about these risks in this article. 

So, small business owners get ready to understand every element of the cyber security risks.

Also Read: Cyber Security Management Platform

What are Cyber security Risks?

Cyber security risks are the potential for a company’s information system to be exposed to dangerous actors that could cause damage or loss. 

It is also known as the threat of data loss, ransom demand, or property destruction. These threats could be the results of a hack of your business’s IT systems. Your business can meet financial loss or network damage due to these risks. 

These risks can also harm your business’s reputation because it may push your customers to feel that their personal information is not safe within your organization. 

These threats are too dangerous for your business because they can lead to computer failure or unauthorized use of data. A security breach exposing your company’s database to unauthorized access could result in operational disruption or data theft, potentially leading to ransom demands. 

That’s why understanding cyber security risks and taking the right steps against these risks has become essential. 

Top Cyber Security risks and Their Solutions for Small Business

As we mentioned before, small businesses are at a high risk of cyber attacks. Therefore,  these businesses must prepare themselve to prevent being targeted for these attacks. Let’s understand the top cyber security risks for these businesses:

1. Malware 

Malware, also known as malicious software, is a cyber attack on your IT systems that usually executes unauthorized access to your system.  

It can be deployed through ransomware, viruses, phishing, and more. It can also downloaded during a drive-by-attack that involves auto-downloading of this malware when they visit an infected website. 

Keyloggers that transmit users’ keystrokes back to the hack are the perfect example of these attacks. 

Solution: You should keep the security software, web browser, and operating system up-to-date to fight against these attacks. It would also be best to set an antivirus to run a scan after each scan. 

2. Ransomware 

Ransome is another similar cyber attack software that hackers use to attack an organization. 

It can lock you out of your computer and restrict your access to your data by encryption. You must enter a special key to restore access to the data. The hacker will only give you this key if you pay them a ransom. 

The most malicious ransomware erases all the data if the ransom is paid. It means that there is no guarantee that a hacker will give you access if you have paid the ransom. 

Solution:  The best way to fight against this attack is to use a firewall or antivirus. You could also be best to recommend your employees to use a secured VPN when they are not working in your office. 

You should back up your business’s data to reduce the chances of getting your data lost. It will allow you to access it even if your system is affected by ransom. However, you should ensure that your backup is updated and separated from the main network. 

3. Viruses 

There are many types of viruses aimed to harm your organization’s system. 

Computer viruses can damage the program, delete or harm its files, or even slow your computer performance. 

You can get these viruses in any way, like sharing files, downloading harmful apps from unknown sources, or even visiting a malicious website. However, you can easily notice some signs of these viruses within your systems. 

Increased pop-up windows, deleted files, unauthorized password changes, and more are some of those signs that can help you find these viruses. 

Solution: Similar to protection from malware, you should keep your operating system, security software, and web browser software updated to keep it strong against these threats. It would also be best to keep your antivirus ready to scan after each update. 

You should also use firewalls to block malicious traffic access to your system. Besides these, you can adopt several cyber security techniques to beat these attacks. 

4. Phishing 

Cybercriminals often perform phishing attacks with the aim of stealing information like credit cards or bank info, social media passwords, and security passwords. Phishing and business email compromise (BEC) can be disastrous for small corporations. 

These attacks often happen through emails or text messages that look original. 

Employees can be tricked by cybercriminals who send fraudulent messages containing links. Clicking on these links can lead to the disclosure of sensitive information like passwords and payment details. 

For example, hackers can pretend to be from your company’s IT department or ask your employees of your company network to access confidential.  

Solution: You should consider making your digital footprint. It is the data that your business makes publicly available. 

You can also consider enabling an email filter to increase protection against these emails. On top of that, it would be great to enable antivirus on your system.  

5. Password theft

Password is the most common protection technique in cyber security. 

You might be aware that you should not use common passwords, like “123456” or “password.” 

Despite countless warnings, several people and organizations still use easy-to-guess passwords on their social media accounts, bank accounts, and more. 

Cyber attackers can use high-speed programs to analyze passwords instantly. These techniques are more successful when a victim uses a common password or personal information as a password. 

They also use another technique named hashing where they can use a hash (one-way encryption program to steal passwords) depending on the encryption strength of the account software. 

Solution: There are a few solutions that you can adapt to deal with these threats:

1. You must create a tricky password of over 15 characters by mixing different characters, including upper-case and lower-case alphabets, numbers, and special characters. 
2. You should mandatorily ignore keep common password. 
3. You must consider using a password manager to generate and manage complex passwords. 
4. You should use MFA to ensure that users use more than one password to gain access to a business account. 
5. You must change all default passwords before distributing devices to your staff. 

6. IoT attacks

The Internet of Things (IoT) is also becoming a daily used name in the digital age. It empowers fridges, printers, and other appliances to connect through Wifi and get smart features. 

While IoT is giving these household appliances a smart feature, it leads to improved cyber security risks. 

Security on these devices is comparatively lower than on other devices because their manufacturer considers hackers will not target these appliances. It leads to increased risks of getting targeted by cyber attackers. 

Its manufacturers are partially mistaken here because hackers can use these devices to gain access to your wider network. 

Solution:  Similar to securing passwords, there are many ways to protect IoT devices from cyber attacks. Let’s explore some of those ways:

• It would help to secure your WiFi network by changing the default password to something unique and strong password. 
• If possible, you should host these devices on a guest network to add an extra layer of protection. 
• You should use privacy settings to control and limit device access. 

7. Human error

As per stats, human errors can be the reason for 95 percent of cyber security breaches. 

This means that employees’ unintentional actions can lead to more security breaches. Some examples of these errors are clicking on the suspect email attachment, visiting harmful websites, and using weak passwords. 

Criminals often wait for this error to happen. 

Solution: You must reduce human errors by giving cyber security awareness training to your employees. 

8. Cross-site attacks

Last but not least, cross-site attacks are also a significant cyber security risk for small businesses. 

These threats are also famous as cross-site scripting (XSS). it is a type of vulnerability that hackers can find in some web apps.  These attacks take benefits of these vulnerabilities to run malicious scripts in your browser. 

For example, you permit your clients to communicate with each other through an online forum. A bad code might be within the forum post that triggers an action of another customer via the forum. 

With this approach, hackers can attack a user account. 

Solution: You must use the following solutions to fight against these attacks- 

• Filter input on arrival
• Encode data on output 
• Use the right response header
• Content security policy 

Also Read: Cyber Security Awareness Tips For Employees

Conclusion

Cyber Security Risks is a potential threat for cyber attacks. Small businesses are at the highest risk of meeting these attacks. Here, we have highlighted some of those threats that you can meet as a small business owner. However, you can prevent these attacks by following the right solution.