If you own a business and rely on a computer system, have a website, use online software or holds electronic data about your customers, clients or employees, then you need to carry on reading.
The likelihood is that you’re already being attacked but you just don’t know it yet. In just a simple click on one of those spam emails all of us receive daily, your business could be in turmoil.
Spam emails don’t just come from suspicious looking email addresses which to most are obviously not legitimate, they can be coming from a long-term business friend as they have been hacked.
Did you know?
- 340,000 apps downloaded every minute in 2016*
- 5 billion Google searches per day*
- In 2016 66% of small firms surveyed were victims of cyber-crime.*
- 7million cyber offences in the UK – almost 50% of all crime*
- 5million debit / credit card frauds
- 4million computer virus attacks
- 1million non-investment fraud
- 65million hacking of emails or social media
Some Small Simple Tips:
- Change your passwords on a regular basis and try to use longer and more complex words. The most overused and least safe passwords include 12345, password, football, family member names.
- Always keep firewalls turned on. Having this turned off is like leaving your office door open at the end of the day.
- Use antivirus software and keep it up to date. Most programmes can be set to update automatically overnight.
- Never respond to links embedded in emails when you don’t know the source. Hackers are now starting to copy part of a known email address and changing the last part; so, read the whole address.
- If your supplier sends you an invoice and the account details are different, make sure you call them to ensure this is correct. Hackers are now mimicking invoices and they can, in a lot of cases, look identical. It’s also good practice that payments over £5,000 are double checked by another person.
Call our Cyber expert Jeremy Anderson on 01444 810 442 for real, trusted advice which could potentially save your business from the worst-case scenario or check out our Cyber insurance covers here www.bennettchristmas.com/business/cyber.
Sources:
* www.in.tune.com
* www.internetlivestats.com
* FSB Cyber report
* www.telegraph.co.uk – 2018