This is money website has reported on a study done by Kaspersky Lab's an established Antivirus and security provider that most small businesses are burying their head in the sand.
"Kirill Slavin, UK managing director at Kaspersky Lab, said: 'While it is encouraging to see the extent to which micro firms are embracing the latest technologies, this must go hand-in-hand with a strong approach to internet security.
'Micro firms don’t have to become IT security experts. Most of the time it’s the IT equivalent of remembering to lock all the doors and windows when you go out, make sure you have some additional protection and not to leave valuables where others can easily see and get to them."
It's a good point, and I think a lot of us can be guilty of thinking it won't happen to us. We got attacked 18 months ago with a malware attack which gave us a wakeup call. Although no damage was done, it did dent our confidence and made us revisit all of our security, from our server hosting, scanning security, through to transactions, passwords and encryption.
Then this year we were targeted with a VAT fraud, with fraudsters posing as us and utilising our business name, address and VAT number. After this episode, a HMRC security team met with us and advised us to stop publicly displaying our VAT number, which we did.
Unfortunately like most businesses, security reviews and updates to your process tends to get done after the event and not before. So maybe schedule some time to review your own security procedures?
Do you hold customer data, are your invoicing records secure, is your hosting secure, do you regularly back everything up, change passwords etc.
All food for thought! Anyone else got any security stories to share?
