Statistics Canada reported a 2019 data, that most Canadian businesses continue to not report cyber security incidents to police services. The reasons businesses stated for not reporting were that the incidents were resolved internally, the incidents were too minor to be reported, or the incidents were resolved through an information technology (IT) consultant or contractor.
Small businesses have increasingly started incorporating cybersecurity solutions into their business practices, realizing the intensity of these incidents and the impact they can have on the future of their business. As a result, Canadian businesses have implemented cybersecurity measures, including anti-malware software, email security, and network security, to protect their information and communication technology infrastructure. This can be seen as a positive trend as the internet has been a lifeline for many Canadians since 2020.
As small businesses involved in the cyber digital space increase their efforts to promote their brands and make their products available, cybersecurity is increasingly becoming an issue of great concern. According to the International Telecommunication Union,
“Cybersecurity is the collection of tools, policies, security concepts, security safeguards, guidelines, risk management approaches, actions, training, best practices, assurance and technologies that can be used to protect the cyber environment and organization and user’s assets.”
The attack can happen through the small businesses’ connected computing devices, personnel, infrastructure, applications, services, telecommunications systems, and the totality of transmitted and/or stored information in the cyber environment. Some cyber attacks that small businesses are prone to are malware, phishing, spamming, spoofing, spyware, trojans, viruses, denial-of-service and distributed denial-of-service attacks, breach of access, and password sniffing, system infiltration, and website defacement.
To prevent the means and methods of cyber attacks, cybersecurity strives to ensure the attainment and maintenance of the security properties of the organization and user’s assets against relevant security risks in the cyber environment. The field has become significant in current times due to the increased use of these aids in the growth of small businesses and our general lives.
Small businesses and Cyberattacks
In an article titled “Improving cybersecurity means understanding how cyberattacks affect governments and civilians,” written by Debora Irene Christine, noted that “ the cyber incidents have impacted organizations of all sizes, including those with less awareness and capacity to defend themselves, such as civil society organizations and small businesses.”
Cybercriminals know that small businesses might not have the resources to spend on security staff and software as a much larger enterprise would. This makes them a prime target, as hackers see small businesses as particularly vulnerable, especially those without basic security measures like antivirus software.
Along with the personal losses that cyber attack issues cause to small businesses, including monetary, integrity, and trust losses from customers, such an attack can lead to the shutting down of the company due to the huge ransom demand from the hackers. Hackers consider small businesses a means to reach large companies’ data systems due to their collaborative work or other partnerships. Due to the increased use of online accounting and digital checkout, the small business database is also a treasure box full of customers’ bank accounts and card details. Hence, cyber attacks on small businesses can cause personal damage and act as a medium for others’ downfall.
Keeping Small Businesses Safe from Cyberattacks
- Small businesses should act proactively to keep their data safe and secure from cyber-attacks. This can be done by keeping themselves updated about the latest and innovative cyber attacks and risks reported.
- They should strategize their cybersecurity practices, including training employees to detect malicious approaches, following a zero trust policy, and data backup and encryption, which will improve the response to data breach incidents and help recover lost data securely and safely.
- Installing cybersecurity solutions that best suit the requirements of a small business enterprise and cater to their data security needs.
- Along with software solutions to keep the security high, seek the help of cybersecurity specialists who can provide expert help in conducting vulnerability assessments of the systems and security audits.
- Ensure the implementation of a strong password that is not easy to hack and does not give access to unauthorized entry.
Digital Security Solutions for Small Businesses
1. Guardio
Guardio is a lightweight extension designed to help you browse quickly and securely.
It is great for online security as it cleans your browser, speeds it up, and protects your private information. Guardio’s solutions help combat new threats, create a highly secure environment, and improve users’ online experience, thus securing the digital world for everyone.
Guardio’s flagship product focuses on the browser ecosystem as it plays a key role in storing the most valuable information, from messages, banking information, cryptography, and e-commerce, to become the de-facto operating system. Their services include providing advanced anti-phishing protection from emails and web pages that attempt to steal personal or payment information, monitoring information leaks, stopping unwanted notifications, and removing malicious extensions.
2. SpamTitan Plus
SpamTitan Plus provides a leading-edge, AI-driven anti-phishing solution with the latest “zero-day” threat protection and intelligence. With the lowest false positive rate of any product, it offers better coverage, a significant improvement in phishing link detections, and faster detection speeds.
It is one of the best anti-phishing tools that can protect against malicious URLs and eliminate the risk of a “wrong click” that could result in stolen personal data, stolen financial card details, stolen log-in credentials, and the installation of malware onto your computer. Spamtitan Plus inspects all URLs to identify links to malicious websites. It also rewrites all URLs and provides time-of-click analysis to protect against links to websites that appear to be safe on delivery but are later weaponized with malware.
3. Bitdefender
Bitdefender is a cybersecurity leader delivering best-in-class threat prevention, detection, and response solutions worldwide and offers the best protection and lowest impact on performance by protecting devices against malware without compromising speed. Bitdefender provides cybersecurity solutions with leading security efficacy, performance, and ease of use to small and medium businesses, mid-market enterprises, and consumers.
Bitdefender is guided by the vision to be the world’s most trusted cybersecurity solutions provider. They are committed to defending organizations and individuals around the globe against cyberattacks to transform and improve their digital experience. Their multi-layered protection keeps the devices safe from all new and existing e-threats, and the security software reacts instantly to malware without compromising the system’s performance. Bitdefender provides complete protection to online privacy and personal information.
4. Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
Barracuda CloudGen Firewall provides multiple layers of detection, including advanced threat signatures, behavioral and heuristic analysis, and static code analysis. It offers a comprehensive set of next-generation firewall technologies to ensure real-time network protection against a broad range of network threats, vulnerabilities, and exploits, including SQL injections, cross-site scripting, denial of service attacks, trojans, viruses, worms, and spyware. It offers cloud services that automatically offload resource-intensive tasks such as virus and spyware scanning, content filtering, and reporting to the cloud, so that network performance is not compromised.
Barracuda CloudGen Firewall offers services like DHCP that automatically assigns IP addresses to clients in the same network and the forwarding Firewall service that handles all traffic for which the destination does not match with a listening socket on the firewall. The SIP Proxy server allows the CloudGen Firewall to act as a (transparent) proxy for SIP and RTP connections. The Virus Scanner service provides virus protection, archive scanning, malware detection, and HTTP multimedia streaming. For administration of Wi-Fi networks, the Wi-Fi service provides configuration settings for the local access point.
5. Acronis Cyber Backup
Acronis Cyber Backup deduplication minimizes storage space by detecting data repetition, storing identical data only once, and offering data protection across 20+ platforms. Every system, physical, virtual, cloud, and all workloads are consolidated to safeguard data across all platforms. They empower IT teams with cyber protection solutions.
Acronis Cyber Protection Solutions protect all data, applications, and systems wherever they are. With their unique combination of automation and integration, customers gain all the prevention, detection, response, recovery, and forensics capabilities required to safeguard their workloads while streamlining their protection efforts. They work with the belief that every organization’s data, applications, systems, and productivity should be protected against loss, theft, and downtime, whether it’s caused by cyberattacks, hardware failure, natural disaster, or human error.
Building Resilience for Small Businesses
Small businesses should always be vigilant and aware of their digital media presence, performance, and actions due to the number and methods of cyberattacks that are rapidly expanding. One wrong click can lead to the loss of the business. However, small businesses should also demonstrate a readiness to act in such circumstances.
Small businesses should budget a reliable amount for developing such security measures to protect their data and information, especially with a variety of digital solutions available for the secure operation of small businesses in the digital environment.
It is essential to keep small businesses safe and secure online. To read more on these topics, subscribe to CanadianSME Small Business Magazine https://lnkd.in/dbqmSKN. For the latest updates, visit our Twitter page at @canadian_sme.
