How Startups can Prepare their Cybersecurity Teams against Digital Attacks
The job culture is diminishing slowly, and with that, there is a rise in startups. There are short courses out there that teach you about starting up your own business, there are examples of experienced individuals who could no longer work under a boss. There are plenty of people who cannot do the traditional 9 to 5 or for that matter reach the office at sharp 9. All this has led to the building of huge startup culture.
Even though startup culture has gotten so popular it is not easy to get a startup going. Moreover, the challenges faced by startups are immense. We have all heard of the common challenges that startups face such as finances, marketing strategies, market penetration and on goes the list, but there is this one underestimated challenge that startups cannot afford to neglect. Startups need to prepare themselves for digital attacks. Let’s not be the pigeon here, small or new businesses are not safe from digital attacks, and they need to brace themselves against, viruses, hackers and above all data breach.
Cybercrime Awareness and Identifying Vulnerabilities
The cybercrime awareness started when businesses like, Target and Sears raised awareness risks and threats of digital attacks. Recently surveys suggested that many small organizations, mostly startups are living under the impression that they are not subjected to cybercrime or digital attacks. Their perspective is that they aren’t so immersed in the market to be attacked.
Keeping this perspective, they ignore a lot of possible threats and as a result, end up losing a lot of sensitive data. Now since one of the most common challenges for startups is a financial constraint or lack of enough resources retrieving lost data or recreating it for example conducting researches and data collection is not so easy and quite expensive. It requires a lot of resources.
Why Cybersecurity System is Crucial for Startups
Statistics indicate grim conditions. A huge majority of startups lack a proper security system, and their IT professionals lack information security training. While some do have information about cybercrime and digital attacks, many of them do not prepare thinking anyone would want to steal their data. Digital attacks are not just intentional, they are unintentional too. As important users are to a network, they can pose serious threats too.
As we talked above, unintentional leaks are among the biggest threats to an organization. Not all employees can be tech equipped in an organization to make sure when they access the internet they don’t bring bugs along. Since startups require a lot of time and effort the device usage also almost doubles. When many devices are connected to a network, chances of unintentional leakages increase a lot.
Hence it is integral that startups focus on having a security system that can prevent intentional and unintentional digital attacks, one could way to prevent this is to hires at least one tech expert with information security training.
As business giants and old enterprises in the market start getting serious and heavily equipped to battle digital attacks, startups have become the new target for hackers and quite many threats. Kaspersky Lab revealed in 2014 that small and medium-sized enterprises lost around $200,000 in cyber-attacks annually. Those are huge numbers and startups don’t want to end up losing so much when they are about to get a grip of the market.
Preparing For Digital Attacks
Even now there is no tangible battlefield, it requires preparation for startups on a virtual ground to be able to deal with digital attacks. Here's everything you need to know about preparing for digital attacks.
Hire/Train a Tech Expert and Implement Firewall/Antivirus
First and foremost should be to get on-board a technology expert. It is better than the expert is trained for information security and if not it’s integral that the expert is provided information security training. The next most important step is to use a firewall for your internet connections. All devices that are attached to the business’s network should have antiviruses installed and regularly updated.
Even if the company operates with two employees, any use of the digital age content if not secured can be harmful. So, employees should be trained on cybersecurity principles and once in a while checked upon. It is quite important that employees be taken in the loop for changes made, for what kind of threats the organization is prone to and what are the strengths which make it immune to risks.
Once in a while employees can be shown how to update their systems so they can do so in the absence of an expert. Software upgrades should not be ignored and followed up with regularly.
Establish a Strong Backup
Back-ups are your best friends. It’s not just a security measure but also a preparation for other calamities. There should be more than one copies of important material in more than one device. No matter how much you trust someone, no one is to be trusted with your device or personal computer.
Control Data Access Efficiently
Restrict physical access of unauthorized personnel or anyone who shouldn’t be using it from accessing your devices. Securing Wi-Fi networks is also important. Therefore, workplace Wi-Fi should be secure and hidden. One really important aspect is to provide every individual with their own personal accounts to log-in, this keeps everyone’s data safe, prevents leakages and unauthorized accessing of data. No one but your IT expert should be installing software into the system and last but not the least changing passwords may not seem like a big task, but it is exceptionally important and required.
Conclusion
Data leakage could have a crippling effect on a startup, costing a lot more than just financial loss. The damage could be big and long-lasting. Browse through our courses to find Information security training courses and get your professionals trained and equipped today!