A significant concern for business owners and those at the helms of
organisations is cyber security. A cyber attack can devastate a
business, whether through compromising data, causing monetary loss or
damaging corporate reputation. It is a fear shared amongst the majority
of business leaders, with many unsure of how to keep their company safe,
or the best approach to take to ensure they are protected.
Emails: a gateway for cyber criminals
Spam email campaigns are a common way for cyber criminals to cause
chaos for a business. A recent example of such a campaign impacted Gmail
users, where a number of account holders had spam emails in their sent
folder. The campaign involved forged email headers that made it look as
though users were receiving emails from themselves. This example shows
even Google isn’t safe from malicious activity but in this instance,
thankfully, it was more a case of an annoyance rather than a major
threat. What it does show, however, is how easy it is for email accounts
to be compromised.
How can businesses avoid major threats?
Anti-Virus software
Having cyber security software on your company’s computers can help
prevent malware impacting your business. If a computer has been
affected, regular scans by anti-virus software can detect the virus and
remove it from the computer. The latest email filtering software can
also be incredibly useful for businesses. This software will scan
incoming messages and as a result, means phishing emails will not be
received in an employee’s inbox in the first place and will sit in a
spam folder where they can easily be deleted.
However, simply purchasing anti-virus software is not enough and it
is important to take a multi-faceted approach to your business’ security
to be most effective.
Employee training
Your employees also have a major role to play when it comes to cyber
security. It’s not uncommon for all staff members in an office setting
to have an email account. This therefore means there are multiple
gateways available to hackers to compromise a business.
Giving your employees basic cyber security training can make a big
difference to the chances of your business being impacted by a cyber
threat. Phishing emails, for example, can be incredibly convincing to
the unaware employee. These emails can mimic an email from what may
appear to be a genuine sender in a very sophisticated way, which means
an employee may mistakenly follow the instructions of a malicious email
to click on a link or open an attachment that could result in malware
infecting their computer or your whole business network
Even worse, cybercriminals will try to entice users into providing
sensitive data or making a financial transaction by impersonating a
colleague or external contact, for example.
Making employees aware of these threats means they can identify a
risk and subsequently avoid it. Having a policy that requires employees
to change their email passwords on a regular basis should also be
implemented.