Nov 9, 2018 Posted in blog, Information Security

Cybersecurity for Small Businesses

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has recently created a whole section on cybersecurity awareness for small businesses. It can be viewed here –> https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/small-businesses/cybersecurity.

Best of all, the resources are all free to read and use within your own organization. When I first heard of the FTC doing this, I was glad because many smaller businesses find it difficult to obtain free security resources and expertise. There are a lot of small businesses that either state they have no resources, or they lack the funds for information security and awareness. Well, the posted information by the FTC is a great way for businesses to measure their current security practises.

What will I learn ?

Some of the topics discussed are:

ransomware
phishing emails
cyber insurance
physical security
information regarding the NIST framework
email security

Why is it important to learn ?

These are topics all businesses should be aware of and have some knowledge of. As most of these topics relate to everyday issues many companies face on a frequent basis. I’ve seen several different stats that show businesses are quite frequently targeted for phishing email attacks. Therefore, having the knowledge of what a phishing email is, and how to protect yourself and your employees is vital knowledge to have. Many businesses, who will not have not thought about obtaining cyber insurance. What happens if your company is breached by a cyber criminal who steals all of your customer data ? Do you have the necessary cyber insurance to protect yourself from a lawsuit ? Is your email providing adequate security to prevent impostors to pose emails as your executives, and asking your employees to transfer funds to them ?

The FTC cybersecurity website asks and prepares you for these types of issues. It’s a great read to look over and ask your IT teams to see if many of these security practises are in place. If not, now you have some resources that can better help tackle these gaping holes in your security practises.

Do you know of a friend or a business that could use some more knowledge related to cybersecurity ? Feel free to share this blog post and the FTC cybersecurity web link. Hopefully, this post helps small and medium sized businesses out there with some basic cybersecurity practises.