There is a constant battle furiously going on between thieving hackers and their victims: Enterprises with digital assets that are poorly protected. In most cases it is seen that small business enterprises either are ignorant about the danger and the pervasiveness of data theft or have obsolete beliefs about document security. In both scenarios, the ignorance and archaic beliefs held by the company are highly unlikely to protect the organisation against attack and their systems and data being breached.
Going by statistics, based on the Data Breach Report by Verizon in 2013, opportunistic cyber terrorists and thieves see easy money when they encounter unsecured data in small business enterprises. In spite of the wave of cyber-attacks and data theft in small businesses, a large number of them are still failing to respond actively against high impact, low complicated attacks. At the same time, because of impractical beliefs harboured by such companies regarding data theft, they are endangering themselves to massive liabilities: Loss of money, decrease in financial value and a sullied repute.
It has never been so crucial to expel misconceptions around hacking and data protection. The time has come to waken up and protect information, irrespective of the size of your organisation.
Read on as we clear the air on 3 of the largest fallacies surrounding data theft and hacking.
Myth #1: Cyber-Attacks Only Happen On Large Enterprises.
According to the Data Breach Report published by Verizon in 2013, the ripe targets for black hat hackers are not large enterprises, but rather small business organisations. According to the detailed report, there are staggering accounts when it comes to attacks on small businesses. Over 75% of document theft was perpetrated by degenerate hackers against small businesses with 150 employees or less.
Myth #2: My Business Is Too Inconspicuous To Become A Prey.
On the contrary, hackers specifically look for small businesses as they are known to lack the levels and grades of security compared to large organisations, and also have rich data worth stealing. If you are of the opinion that the data in your organisation is still inconspicuous for these hackers, think again. The single most reason for small and medium enterprises being attacked is for financial gain. Over 95% of attacks on small businesses revealed that Social Security numbers were compromised, customer information was stolen, and account numbers were hacked into.
According to the report, it has been seen that large organisations that come under cyber-attacks are usually because of a specific ideology or in an attempt to disclose classified or sensitive information to the public at large. On the other hand, the grounds for doing such an attack to a small business are extremely miniscule which is why, data or information that gets stolen from a small organisation is usually traded for cash.
When a small business is attacked, the company’s servers are usually emptied of content as hackers look for valuable information such as credit card details, social security information, invoices, e-mail data and other such classified information that can be sold for easy money.
Myth #3: I Am Extremely Busy at the Moment, We’ll Do Something about It When We Come to It.
Yes, you will have to do something about it; but only hope that it is not too late and that your organisation does not come to an end because of the delay in safeguarding your documentation. In addition to the financial loss that may destroy your business, the cyber-attack on your company’s resources may continue for months on end, as sensitive data and logging passwords will still be visible to the hacker even after the attack.
Once a cyber-attack has taken place in an organisation, the hacker usually engages insidious, less noticeable assaults. After an initial compromise, the likelihood of nabbing a cyber-thief is highly improbable. Keeping this in mind, it makes great business sense, time and investment to proactively protect crucial documentation before it happens.