It's Only Becoming More Important

Cyber security is becoming a major concern of small business owners and the UK government alike. Cyber criminals are getting more daring, and cyber attacks can cause plenty of problems that can ruin your business.

You might think your business is too small to be noticed by hackers. Perhaps you feel as if your business 'flies under the radar', so to speak. But it's worth noting which businesses are at risk from cyberattacks: all of them.

What's A Cyber Attack Anyway?

A cyber attack is a way to illegally gain access and control over another individual or company’s computer system. Most common cyber attacks involve espionage, fraud and identity theft as well as gaining unauthorized access to private information such as financial records, personal correspondence and sensitive documents. Cyber attackers can even cause physical damage to systems by running special programs designed to overload hardware.

Is My Company Too Small To Worry About Common Cyber Attacks?

That's why cyber security is becoming a major concern of small business owners and the UK government alike. Cyber criminals are getting more daring, and cyber attacks can cause plenty of problems that can ruin your business.

You might think your business is too small to be noticed by hackers. Perhaps you feel as if your business 'flies under the radar', so to speak. But it's worth noting which businesses are at risk from cyberattacks: all of them.

Short Answer: No!

It doesn't matter if you own a large or small company, there will always be hackers out there looking for your information. After all, hackers also steal individual credit card information and other important elements of personal information from one person at a time - why would a small business be any less enticing to a criminal?

This is why Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus exist: to protect businesses of all sizes. When it comes to small businesses, the intent is to encourage small business owners to take ownership of cyber security, and create a plan that will keep the company safe from hackers going forward. The self assessment option involved with the Cyber Essentials certification means that your company can start right away with your Cyber Essentials review!

This post will explore how Cyber Essentials came about, why every company should earn Cyber Essentials certification, and how you can protect your company against malicious attacks.

What Types Of Malicious Cyber Attacks Are There?

Unfortunately, the answer is 'many'. You are probably familiar with many of them already, even if only with regards to your personal computer. For example, you may run antivirus software for your home computer even if you don't do anything particularly important on it. After all, even if no personal information is at risk, it's still a hassle to deal with viruses.

The cyber attack situation has become especially grim, though, when it comes to small businesses. They tend to be the perfect victims for cyber criminals because, unlike large organizations with significant budgets and more diversified staff functions, small businesses are often not as well prepared for a cyberattack as their larger counterparts.

Furthermore, many small companies have no dedicated IT staff, and their employees may not be particularly tech-savvy on their own. This leaves them particularly vulnerable to cyber attack, including targeted attacks that specifically seek to exploit their company with specific, publicly known information and discovered industry contacts.

We certainly hope that your company learns about the most common cyber attacks strictly from an outsider's viewpoint, such as this article! We will review here a few important types.

Viruses And Other Types Of Cyberattack

Viruses are the most well-known type of cyber attack. They can do any number of things - they can delete or destroy files, make your computer thoroughly unusable, and more. Viruses can come via attached files sent by email, by clicking infected links on the web, or by opening infected files shared online.

If you've ever received a spam mail from someone you know, they may have been infected with a virus. Some viruses insert themselves into the victim's mail client, automatically sending copies of the virus to everyone in their address book. This is also often coordinated with phishing campaigns. Users are bombarded with misleading emails with notices about critical updates that need to be installed or billing invoices that lead them to fake payment pages.

Cryptocurrency And Cyber Security

More recently, a more malicious type of cyber attack to become all too common in recent years is ransomware. Ransomware attacks involve sophisticated malware that encrypts the victim's files so that you can't use them at all, then locks down that computer completely. Once it's locked down, the virus then demands an extortionate fee, or a ransom, if the user wants them back.

A copy of the information is generally also downloaded to the attacker at the same time. If the affected user declines to pay, often the attacker threatens to post the encrypted data onto the dark web along with the decryption key, as a warning to future victims.

Payment is generally demanded in bitcoin or in another form of cryptocurrency, due to its relative anonymity and ease of transfer. It's much easier to get away with the money if it's entirely digital.

Many large companies, such as Carnival Cruise Lines and British Airways, have suffered ransomware attacks in recent years, which have led to their computer systems being shut down and the loss of millions of pounds of business while the issue was sorted.

Oh, Bitcoin, You Scamp

Cryptocurrency also figures into another type of cyber attack - Bitcoin miner viruses, or cryptojacking. These viruses insert their processes into your system, and make use of your system resources to secretly mine Bitcoin, or other cryptocurrencies, for the criminals who created the virus.

This results in slow performance from your computer as well as increased power consumption and wear and tear on your system components. In fact, the difference in power usage could end up costing your company a lot of money, as crypto mining is incredibly energy-intensive.

New And Improved... Hackers?

If all of this wasn't bad enough, cyber criminals are constantly coming up with new ways to attack businesses large or small. Ransomware attacks, for example, were never a particularly important method of attack until the advent of cryptocurrency, which made it considerably easier for ransomware attackers to anonymously extort their victims. In this same manner could new and developing technologies lead to previously unimagined methods of exploitation.

That's why it's important to stay up to date and aware of developing trends in network security. Though cyber attacks come in many forms, a good cyber security solution can help protect your business. Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus are there to ensure that your business is as well-protected as possible against cyber threats.

Is It Even A Virus?

Some types of software aren't quite at the level of being a virus, but are annoying nonetheless. One such example of this type of software, Bonzibuddy, gained a level of notoriety in the early 90's by simply managing to be just that annoying.

The software, available for download seemingly everywhere because of the company's aggressive advertising campaign, put a purple gorilla on the user's desktop that periodically interacted with the user by telling jokes, singing songs, and so on. Underneath the benign exterior, however, the program was collecting user information, serving extra advertising, and would constantly reset the user's home page to bonzi.com without permission.

Under The Bonnet

The program was malicious enough in its own right - changing the user's home page and stealing user information to serve advertising is certainly malicious in itself - but users just got fed up with the gorilla covering up text on the screen or talking when they would rather not listen to him.

Either way, while Bonzibuddy wasn't technically a virus in the traditional sense, it certainly managed to cause enough problems to where it became an unwelcome element of early 00's computer culture.

What Is Cyber Essentials?

Cyber Essentials is a cyber security certification that ensures your business is protected against common cyber attacks such as the ones mentioned here. It's a simple process, and you can easily pass with flying colors if you follow the simple basic steps provided by the certification.

Cyber Essentials Plus certification is relatively similar to Cyber Essentials, but also involves a third-party audit of the system. This means that the Cyber Essentials Plus certification is only granted to businesses who have proven their cyber security meets official standards.

Why Do You Need Cyber Essentials?

Implementing data security can seem like a daunting task, particularly to a small business with few resources and little manpower to work with. Anyone who's ever run a small business knows how busy it is when there are a thousand things that demand your attention and maybe only 2 or 3 of you to pull it off.

It's easy to just put off something that you may not fully understand, especially when there are so many things to do that you do understand. At least you're making progress, right?

Well, not quite. If you run any type of company with an online presence, security should be a top priority. Cyber Essentials was designed to give small businesses a simple, easy-to-follow cyber security plan that will keep them protected against cyber attacks. Your business can follow the recommendations, work through the easy checklist, and submit for Cyber Essentials certification.

Your First Footsteps Toward Cyber Security

That means that Cyber Essentials is a first step for small businesses to make sure they are implementing basic security standards, while Cyber Essentials Plus certification is aimed at companies that seek to demonstrate proven compliance with those standards.

Cyber attacks are on the rise in general, and smaller companies are a growing target since they tend to be easier to compromise. In fact, cyber attacks are the number one cyber security risk for small businesses, according to a recent report by Cybersecurity Ventures.

You've likely read about cyber breaches that have involved major companies in the news recently -- Equifax, Uber and British Airways just to name a few . Smaller business owners might be tempted to think these cyber attacks only happen at larger firms, but this would be wrong.

It's About Achievable Goals

Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus exist to give small businesses an easy to understand path toward implementing cyber security while still maintaining a solid level of protection. That means that cyber attack is not something you should ignore just because your company might not be big enough yet.

In fact, it's quite the opposite. Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus were designed with the goal of helping small business prevent cyber attacks. The steps are easy to follow and can be completed in just a few hours for the Cyber Essentials certification.

These steps exist not only to protect you and your business from hackers, but also to help keep your customers safe as well by protecting their sensitive data. That's why it's important to consider what cyber security measures your company needs to take in order to meet these standards.

Complying With GDPR Regulations

There are other factors to consider, too. Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus are critical steps toward ensuring your business is compliant with GDPR standards and regulations regarding data security.

Companies found to be negligent in protecting customer data can be subject to fines and other penalties. In fact, cyber security issues are considered one of the top three reasons for GDPR fines.

The cyber threat landscape is growing dramatically, and cyber attacks are only becoming more sophisticated over time. If your business doesn't take steps to improve cyber security now, you could potentially face enormous monetary losses in the future if you don't protect your company's sensitive data - not just to hackers, but to fines as well.

Be a Good Business Partner

The impact of implementing good cyber security goes beyond the borders of your own business, or even that of your clients and suppliers. When you implement solid cyber security measures, you're not just protecting your own business. You're helping to protect all businesses against cyber threats - and that's good for the UK economy as a whole.

Cyber security is about more than just protecting our personal data, bank details and identity. It's also a matter of national security for governments as well as businesses. Cyber crime costs the UK economy an estimated £11 billion every year, and that money could certainly be better put to use somewhere else than lining a hacker's pockets.

The UK Is A Target

This might surprise you, but more cyber attacks take place in the UK than anywhere else in Europe. In fact, cyber criminals often target British businesses specifically, as they tend to be more lucrative targets than businesses located in some of our friends and neighbors elsewhere in the EU.

If you think cyber security is all about protecting your business against cyber attacks, think again. It's also about helping to protect other businesses too. All of us want cyber criminals behind bars or out of commission altogether, with their ill-gotten gains returned to their rightful owners.

Sometimes, the first step toward preventing crime is to make it impossible to commit. After all, if a hacker can't breach your security system, how can he steal sensitive data?

You Can Let Your Customers Know

You've improved your IT security and acquired certification. It's good to protect your data, but what will your customers think?

The good news is that you can tell them, and they'll be happy to know. Once you've achieved Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus certification respectively, you'll be able to display the relevant certification logo on your marketing material, including your website, business cards, flyers and newsletters.

You'll want your customers, and your suppliers, to know that your business is doing what it takes to keep their data safe. They'll appreciate knowing it's in good hands.

It's Not Just Your Business, It's Your Life

Small businesses have one specific problem related to cyber attacks that large companies generally don't - it's easy to get to the top.

A large multinational organization will generally have multiple layers of security between the CEO and the average low-level user (which is usually where data compromise begins). However, a small business will often make the CEO/owner accessible to the average customer with as little as an email or a phone call. Furthermore, his or her desktop will often be on the same network segment as every other computer and device on the network.

You're The Biggest Target

That makes it easy for a hacker who's gained access to a network to find and target the CEO/owner of a small business. This is bad news because CEOs of companies of any size are just like anyone else - they may do their own shopping online during a break, or otherwise co-mingle their personal finances on company computers.

As a small business owner, it's not just your business assets that can theoretically be exposed during an attack - it could also be your own.

Peace Of Mind

Finally, shoring up your cyber security solution will take one burden off of your shoulders - worrying about hackers in general. After all, the last thing you need to be doing as a small business owner is worrying about cyber criminals.

This means that if you invest in cyber security right now, it will take a huge weight off your shoulders. While no system is perfect, having a strong defense against hackers will give you the peace of mind that your business is doing what it can to protect sensitive customer data and company assets.

Furthermore, as has already been noted, fines resulting from GDPR regulations can also be as financially crippling as a cyber attack. You'll have the peace of mind of knowing that your company will be in compliance with those regulations, so you won't have to worry about potential fines either.

Don't Walk - Run Toward Cyber Security

How can small businesses protect themselves against cyber attacks? How can a CEO of a small business protect his or her own personal data? How can a small business avoid GDPR violations and subsequent fines? How will the customers find out that their data is being looked after in a professional and forward-thinking manner? And finally, as a part of the UK business community as a whole, how can you help protect and defend the state of the economy and the business world around you?

It's Possible!

Fortunately, you can - by making sure that your systems are prepared to meet or even exceed the standards set by the Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus certification programs. The roadmap provided by these programs will help your small business achieve its security goals in a simple and straightforward fashion, without breaking the bank or disrupting business operations during its implementation.

Contact us today to find out more about Cyber Essentials certification and how we can help you secure your business, now and for the future.

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