Protect Your Business From Cyber Criminals.
Business segment is becoming increasingly attractive for creators of malware encryption, which includes the so-called ‘crypto-ransomware’. According to recent Kaspersky Lab statistics, number of attacks against corporate users has increased over the past year six times, from 27,000 to 158,000. This means that the goal of every tenth crypto-ransomware attack is a business entity.
Just last week a certain security company that makes antivirus software published a report that they registered almost 10,000 attempts to abuse Facebook user accounts within two days. The attack spreads through messages with deceptive links. When a user clicked on the link, the malware immediately infected the device and gained access over Facebook account. This extremely effective malware has dramatically spread by social network around the world. Most affected were Europe, South America, Israel and Tunisia.
Business community; particularly small and medium-sized enterprises are becoming most popular targets of cybercriminals. This trend was confirmed by the management of IT Security Risk 2016 released by Kaspersky Lab in partnership with B2B International. According to Kaspersky Lab and B2B International, 42% of small to medium-sized companies became victims of one of the most serious cyber threats of today – crypto-ransomware.
The consequences of this threat can be fatal for these businesses. Any restriction of access to corporate data, even if only for a short time can lead to significant loss. Unless the company has adequate security measures to protect their important data, the only way to get their data back, is to gain the decryption key. However, this can be expensive and do not guarantee access to all blocked data. The most effective method of protection is, therefore, prevention.
Make Regular Backups of important business files. Companies should do a double backup; for example, cloud backup (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.) and other backup on a server, or other removable devices (external disk, USB), depending on the volume of data.
Trust only reliable and reputable service provider, who invests into security. They typically cite security recommendations on their website and publish audits of third-party, specifically focused on the cloud infrastructure. However, a cloud service provider can have own security issues so make sure you know how his solution to a secure backup of stored data and data protection.
Avoid using only freely available security and anti-malware solution. In most cases, small businesses assume that they are able to protect their data with only security tools freely available. However, they should understand that these solutions provide only basic protection and cannot ensure a multilayer security support. Consider the use of specialized solutions that do not require large investments, and offer a high level of protection.
Perform regular updates of your operating system, browser, anti-virus and other applications, make sure all system is up to date. Vulnerabilities of most known and popular software are used by cybercriminals to infect your device, thus, gain access to your device and data.
Prevention, prevention and prevention – when configuring security solutions, ask help of IT professional. Most small businesses do not have their own IT department or own IT specialist, thus, they put trust of their computers to anyone in a company who has minimal experiences. And trust me, this is not the right way. Even small businesses should use services of IT support from experienced professionals who will ensure the control of your software and take all necessary precautions.