Preventing digital crime

It wasn’t that long ago that a business owner could themselves from crime with good locks, an alarm and security cameras.

But, today more theft and business disruption is caused online. The Internet criminal is able to commit acts from the comfort of their home.

Most business owners may not be aware that cybercrime is growing fast. Research by PWC revealed 60% of small businesses suffered an online security breach over a 12-month period. The worst cases distrusted the business for 7-10 days.

What effect would that have on your business?

If you want to reduce the risk of being hit by cyber criminals there are a few things you can do.

• Appoint a business lawyer to help protect your intellectual property
• Training employees on security measures
• Making sure you have the right type of software protection

Start by carrying out a risk assessment. Identify the important information and digital assets your business has. This could be your trademark, Website or customer list.

Some common sense but not always common practice action is to choose more secure passwords that can’t easily be guessed by hackers.

Passwords should be 8-12 characters long, have a combination of both lower-case and capital letters, as well as numbers and symbols.

Do not use anything personal like birth dates, anniversaries, or children’s names. And, change your passwords every two or three months. And, use different passwords for different logins.

An absolute must is anti-virus, anti-spam software and spyware on all computers. Make sure these are kept up to date and use a firewall.

But, you also need to train all of your employees because security lapses of often caused by mistakes made by its employees.

They need to be aware of how digital criminals work and be able to recognise possible threats like spam emails and understand the types of passwords that they should use.