We’ve all heard that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But the adage has never been truer than in today’s unpredictable online universe, where proprietary information can be hacked and inappropriately promulgated, corrupted or simply vanish without warning.

Can a small business afford to sit back and hope for the best?

Enter Cybersecurity for Small Business, a new free online course from the U.S. Small Business Administration that teaches entrepreneurs how to keep their private business information safe, recognize security threats and protect against cyber-attacks.

The take-at-your-own-pace course – available at www.sba.gov/tools/sba-learning-center/training/cybersecurity-small-businesses – includes top security practices to shield client and employee data, payroll records, invoices and other confidential information whose loss or exposure could be extremely troublesome to a small enterprise.

The course also teaches how to prevent both deliberate cyber attacks and accidental cyber damage, how to prepare for decreased productivity brought on by security violations and how to evaluate the array of available security device s and methods.

Those who finish the online course are eligible to receive a certificate authorizing its completion from the SBA, which also offers free courses on starting, managing and financing a business at the SBA Learning Center at www.sba.gov/sba-learning-center.