Thousands of computer systems all over the world are attacked every day. A successful cyber attack can have devastating effects on your business. It can affect your bottom line, as well as your business’ standing and consumer trust. However, there are ways to prevent and protect your business from a cyber attack.

Consequences of a cyber attack. 

Economic Cost of Cyber Attack

Cyber-attacks can result in a huge financial loss. This loss can be caused by theft of corporate or financial information, theft of money, disruption to trading, loss of business or contracts and much more. As well as the chance of losing money to cyber-attackers, companies that have experienced this will likely need to pay for repairing systems or devices and sometimes customer service fees e.g. gift cards, discounts.

Reputational damage

Cyber attacks can damage your business’ reputation and ruin the essential trust in customer relationships. Consequently leading to loss of customers, loss of sales and/or reduction in profits. The effect of reputation damage can even impact on your suppliers, or affect relationships you may have with partners, investors and other third parties with vested interest in your business.

Legal Consequences of a Cyber Breach

Data protection and privacy laws require you manage the security of all personal data you hold. Fines and regulatory sanctions would be put in place if this data is accidentally or deliberately compromised. On the other hand, businesses that comply with GDPR will benefit from an enhanced trust relationship with their customers, who will feel confident that their privacy is being protected. If you’d like to know more about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and how to comply – click here.

How to Prevent Cyber Attacks and Increase Cyber Security

Keep your Computers Updated and Identify Basic Threats

An extremely simple and effective way of preventing a cyber attack is ensuring your network is up to date. Monitoring notifications for updates will demonstrate immediate results. The result of ignored messages will then leave cracks in your defence system.

Additionally, basic threats like unauthorised access to your computer should be tackled immediately before you suffer any loss of information. Most companies contain very sensitive information which, if leaked, could be ruinous for the company. Hackers are always looking for opportunities to invade privacy.  Their aim is to steal data that’s of crucial importance. This means you need to take the necessary precautions to protect your company’s information. Identify and deal with potential threats to your business before they cause harm.  

Use Cloud Services

Having a cloud provider to handle application needs and data storage can cut costs and save time. Data over the cloud is becoming a safer and more affordable option to many businesses. This is because of many factors such as disaster recovery, hosted servers and cloud storage and a flexible pay-as-you-go style package. Of course, stick with only the most reputable companies. Here at Cloudserve we offer, secure cloud computing services.  We take complex cloud services and makes them consumable to small and medium businesses, offering a complete array of IT and communications services utilising the latest secure and encrypted solutions. 

Increase Employee Awareness

One of the most cost-effective methods of preventing a cyber attack is education and training. This is seen as the best cyber-security defence method to most. However, stats show that over 50% of employees do not remember receiving any training. A simple phishing email can be the key to a cyber-attack and is becoming increasingly common with 57% of cyber security attacks being caused by this in the past 12 months. It is critical to understand that cyber-attacks can occur just by a cyber-criminal having access to an employees laptop, proving why it is imperative for your company to implement cyber security and privacy training.

Hire a Security Expert

Although this may sound like a costly approach to increasing cyber security, it can save you lots of money down the line. Having a security specialist on hand lowers risks significantly and can prevent frustrations due to preparation, education and protection. Cyber criminals are becoming more advanced as technology progresses. They are finding other ways to infiltrate business infrastructure and stealing sensitive data that can cost upwards of billions in losses per year.  Not knowing how to protect your business is dangerous. With this in mind, hiring someone who knows what to do can be the answer to keeping your data, and company as a whole, safe.

Alternatively, the use of cloud providers as we mentioned before, can act as an expert for your business. How? Cloud services can include round the clock assistance and support for data protection and cyber security. Also, some cloud providers can specialise in cyber security protection and training along with your package. However, you’ll find that almost all cloud providers will use the latest Cyber Security technologies, processes and measures designed to protect systems, networks and data from cyber crimes.

Beware of Cyber crimes and Carry Out Risk Assessments

Lastly, the best way to stay aware of cyber criminals is to work and prepare for when, not if, cyber attacks occur. Having suitable plans in place, ensures that the company is covered at all times. Always keep records of which information is attractive for criminals and which is not. In addition to this, develop multiple strategies with proper risk assessments on a regular basis to ensure effective solutions should the need arise. These risk assessments should be conducted on a regular basis to spot or prevent risks. Risk assessments ensure the business is safe from competitors and cyber criminals; contributing to the growth of a company.