When it comes to cyberattacks, small—to medium-sized businesses are becoming increasingly vulnerable. This is due to perceived vulnerabilities that are easily exploited by cybercriminals looking to gain access to a business. These attacks can cause mass disruption and potentially lead to financial losses, reputational damage, and legal liabilities.
With a variety of businesses with under 1,000 employees becoming the focus of targeted attacks, it’s important to understand the different vulnerabilities that criminals will look to exploit to gain access. For instance, a small e-commerce business could be targeted with a ransomware attack, where the business’s website is taken down until a ransom is paid. Because if you don’t know how they could breach your defenses and access the data you hold, you can’t protect against it.
Lack of Awareness
Let’s touch up the most obvious factor that cyber threat actors are banking on. You lack awareness of how they can exploit your business and what they are looking for. While this post will cover some of the areas you need to be looking for, the first step to closing the gap for this issue is training and knowledge. Understanding as much as you can about cyber attacks, what is involved, how they operate, and what you need to have in place to deter or prevent attacks is vital. This not only goes for you but also for your entire staff because the more you know, the more you can be vigilant against any threats. Your employees are often the first line of defense against cyber threats, so they must be well-trained and aware of potential risks.
Limited Resources and Expertise
The main reason why it’s becoming increasingly common for small businesses to come under attack is because criminals perceive them to have fewer resources and expertise. The smaller budget might mean a company has overlooked paying for expertise in cybersecurity assistance or lacks an IT team that can help prevent systems from being exploited or exposed. If these duties fall to staff within the company to help out, their lack of knowledge in the area on a more in-depth or technical level can be taken advantage of. But the reality is that this isn’t an expense you should overlook for multiple businesses because the fines for breaches can vastly outweigh the cost of ongoing cybersecurity support.
Weak Passwords
Cybercriminals will expect you not to use robust passwords and to flaunt all the guidelines for protecting business data via effective passwords. Remember, it’s not a person sitting there trying to guess your password; it will be software and programs used by the attacker to try and guess your combination fast, and these systems can work efficiently to move through thousands of passwords hourly.
For strong protection, you need at least a 16-character password that is made up of random letters in both upper and lowercase, and you need to add numbers and symbols for added protection to this, too. For added emphasis, an 8-character password made up of lowercase letters can be cracked in minutes. A hacker facing the task of breaking a 16-character password might be within an hour if you only use one type of character, i.e., lowercase letters. If that 16-character password is made up randomly using different characters, it can take upwards of 700 years. And don’t forget you need to change these passwords regularly, too, for added protection.
Out-of-Date Software
When companies update software, it is because they have found vulnerabilities in the code or are introducing new features or frameworks to improve it. While the stress of an update can be overwhelming, you need to back everything up in the event the update doesn’t work correctly or deletes some of your vital information. The cost of neglecting it can be immense.
However, manually updating everything on time can be laborious in some cases, and this is where patch management solutions can be effective. Patch management solutions work to identify out-of-date software and can help delay new updates until they have been tested and then push them out. This reduces the risk of being attacked via out-of-date software or any disruption from poorly executed updates from the developer.
There are multiple ways cybercriminals can exploit your assets, and identifying vulnerabilities that leave you exposed is a great place to start. Never think it won’t happen to you because it likely will at some point, and you need to be ready and protected for when that time comes.
