Cyber Threats Increase for Small Businesses

If you run a small business, there’s a major area you must consider: hacking.

There is a tendency to see yourself as above the fray and unlikely to suffer an attack. Or you imagine that if you are attacked, you would be able to block it before it becomes a problem.

Don’t count on it. According to Cybersecurity Magazine, one of every five small to medium businesses is hacked each year. The costs can run into thousands, even millions of dollars per case. Your entire business could even be closed. Even small episodes are dangerous. If a client’s info is involved, you’ve likely lost the client.

Many small business owners also consider themselves relatively safe because their assets are so small that hackers will look to bigger companies and corporations with deeper pockets. Small businesses are more likely to be targeted by cyberattacks because they usually don't have fulltime cybersecurity specialists to keep their systems secure. Basically, the “take” may be less from a small business, but the relative ease of the theft makes it worth the hacker’s effort.

What Are The Threats

Knowing what’s out there is important for several reasons. The knowledge can help you determine your exposure and put things in perspective.

For example, the largest, most damaging, and most widespread threat facing small businesses are phishing attacks – tricks that lead users into giving away information like passwords. Phishing accounts for 90 percent of all breaches that organizations face. They represent over $12 billion in business losses.

Phishing generally starts with an email that tries to trick you into clicking on a link. Hackers are quite good at creating an email that looks like it comes from a legitimate source: They may even imbed logos and other identifiers from well-known businesses like PayPal or even your local bank. The email may say you have a problem with your account and provide a link for you to go to “their” site and fix it. Unfortunately, the link is bogus: it will take you to a site that looks like PayPal, your bank, or whatever, but it’s not. When you type in your password or other information, you’ve just given it to the hacker.

This is not new, but it continues to be the “hack leader” because it works. Even those who consider themselves IT sophisticates can fall for this. And a staff member may have never even heard of it. And while you may be exposed to multiple threats each week or even every day, it only takes one slip to create a problem.

Other Considerations

More sophisticated (though not necessarily more dangerous) attacks can follow research on your company. For example, if you use an online job listing service to advertise openings, hackers could check it to find out what kind of software and hardware you use or the name and background of your key personnel. There’s not a lot you can do about that from a practical standpoint – using these services is virtually unavoidable today. But you could visit the site and look at what your company lists with a hacker’s perspective. See what you have on there about your company and make sure those areas are as secure as possible.

Like most things these days, COVID made things worse in several ways. Virtual meetings and an increase in external communications are just two possibilities. Whatever the reason, attacks on small and mid-sized companies have increased by 150 percent over the past two years.

These few examples are far from everything you need to know and be alert to. But it hopefully makes you more aware of the problems and motivated to do what’s possible.

A great deal of good information is available online – your bank and other trusted sources are often a good place to start. Implement relatively easy, non-technical protections like two-factor authentication (where you must get a code through a separate source like a smartphone text).