Out of office doesn't mean out of mind - remember to keep your business secure over the Christmas holidays!
Picture this; the clock is close to striking five on Friday 24th December, keys in hand you’re ready to lock the office doors and send your staff home for the holidays. You’re already daydreaming of relaxing by the fire with a glass of mulled wine. But this all gets rudely interrupted at 4.55 pm when all your systems go down.
Would you know who to call if you found yourself in this situation? What actions would you take if it was on Saturday or in between Christmas and New Years Day? Would you know how to reach your key contacts if there was a total system lockout?
At Christmas, when your business defences are down and there’s an extended period where the majority of the workforce is out of the office, presents a prime opportunity for a cybercriminal to buy more time and poke around your systems undetected.
In the days leading up to 4 July in the USA, a cybercrime gang infiltrated US IT firm Kaseya and posted a $70m ransom demand on the business’ blog on Independence Day. It had global repercussions affecting more than 1,000 companies in their supply chain.
But you don’t need to be turning over millions to attract the bad guys, in fact, it’s the micro and smaller-sized enterprises that are uniquely at risk. Your business’ digital door may be shut but are you confident that it’s locked securely? It doesn’t take much for hackers to barge their way in and gain access to sensitive data and if vulnerabilities aren’t appropriately identified and fixed, you could end up being repeat business for online criminals.
A report by telecoms giant Vodafone found that:
More than 1.3 million small and medium-sized businesses across the UK could fold given the cost of an average cyberattack, which government data states is nearly £8,500!
We hope this never happens to you!
Organisations and business owners are now gearing up for the Christmas period, which means radars should be on a higher alert due to increased risk exposure and more of your staff heading off for annual leave.
We can’t stress enough how important having a security plan is for SMEs like yours. The National Cyber Security Centre has provided preparatory guidelines in five simple steps - think of this invaluable resource as your response and recovery bible - to weaken some impact should an attack occur.
https://youtu.be/xW7xB9Sp9xgSecurity Awareness Training – the key to ,security awareness training is to equip all your employees with a level of awareness to combat online threats. Employees need to be taught what clues to look for that indicate threats, and how to respond when they see them. We’re currently offering free training, policy templates and memberships to any businesses based in Greater Manchester - Learn more here.
Cyber Essentials – this is a government scheme that helps you make your business more resilient against cyber-attacks. ,Cyber Essentials includes £25k insurance for SMEs and also immediate access to a helpline to support you in the early stages of a cyber-attack. So there’s someone there for you 24/7/365. To find out more about that process, we have a number of trusted partners who can work with you to achieve the qualification.
Our aim is to lend a hand to SMEs in the North West of England, so please do get in touch if you want to know more about this or anything cyber-related. Here’s to a restful and problem-free Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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