Online security is a major issue for businesses of all sizes. The good news is that there are IT tools that can give you peace of mind if a security threat arises. They can prevent and stop the threat quickly, providing a great return on investment for your managed IT Services.

Are You Safe?

Some recent famous security breaches you might be familiar with are Facebook, Equifax, eBay, Apple, Panera Bread, Target, Home Depot, Yahoo! and Blue Cross Blue Shield. These breaches resulted in exposing the private data of millions of people to hackers. Athough you may only hear about these breaches happening to larger companies, the risk is high for smaller businesses, too.

Who Is a Target?

The Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report revealed that 61 percent of cyber-attacks in 2017 were targeted at smaller businesses.

Hackers can use a variety of tactics to gain access to a business’s private data or information. According to the study, more than 50 percent of breaches included malware, 81 percent of hacking-related breaches were from leveraging stolen and/or weak passwords, and 43 percent were social attacks.

The majority of malware was installed via malicious email attachments and were financially motivated. About 25 percent were related to espionage, discovered by third parties.

Can My Business Be Safe?

There are many easy and affordable steps a small business owner can and should take to lower the risk for online threats. Here are five of them:

1. Insist on complex and unique passwords // This is the easiest way to prevent your business from being hacked. Have all employees use secure passwords, update them every 90 days and secure them in a safe password keeper. (Learn more at  https://goo.gl/fcgkbK)
2. Use anti-virus and email anti-spam // Anti-virus is software designed to detect and destroy computer viruses. Anti-spam manages and filters unsafe emails from unwanted and blacklisted senders.
3. Make sure you have a firewall // A firewall helps secure and monitor traffic in and out of your network.
4. Create a backup // Storing and protecting your data from unauthorized access is important and can prevent a long-term data loss disaster.
5. Educate all employees // Phishing is the most common form of email hacking and malware installation that can reveal personal and business information. It’s important to educate yourself and your employees from exposing private information to malicious cybercriminals.

To get a comprehensive breakdown of easy-to-implement IT essentials to protect your business from online threats, download The Purple Guys’ free resource, Simple Security—5 Easy Ways at https://goo.gl/8m4n4e

The Purple Guys is the highest-rated outsourced IT support department for small to midsized businesses in Kansas City and St. Louis, holding a 97.3 percent customer satisfaction rate. We’re on the front lines of managing our customers’ security through our 24/7 monitoring services, and we’d be happy to talk with you about your IT needs. 816-221-3900