Hacks And Data Leaks – Cyber Defense Magazine
How to protect businesses from cyberattacks
By Sergey Ozhegov, CEO, SearchInform
Hacks and data leaks: how to protect businesses from cyberattacks
Hardly a week goes by without a hack or data breach incident occurrence. Quite often, large organizations, such as banks, state bodies and corporations become attacked, despite the fact that they are well-sponsored and their employees are usually quite well informed in the information security related issues. Thus, even large enterprises are often incapable of protection against cyber threats. So, the questions arises – what should executives of SMEs, which information security budget is much smaller do? The SearchInform CEO shares advice on how to strengthen an organization’s information security protection.
SMEs are in the focus
Owners of small businesses quite often don’t take cyber security issues seriously, because they believe that intruders aren’t interested in their companies due to their small size. Such approach leads to serious consequences, as it turns small businesses into perfect and vulnerable target.
One of the core risk is critical data leak. Such data includes, but isn’t limited to:
- Client database
- Critical data on some business processes
- Commercial data on business deals etc.
Businesses should also take data privacy laws seriously. There is a global trend of adoption of various acts, aimed at regulation of data-related processes. The new regulations, coming into force worldwide motivate companies to implement specific protective software. The consequences of such norms ignorance become more and more serious. For instance, in case a company doesn’t comply with a regulator’s requirements, it has to pay fines, which, in turn, are also permanently increased.
The main problem is that implementation of information security measures requires significant financial expenditures and takes time. Nevertheless, law requirements and data leak risks must not be ignored anyway. That is why it is strictly important to address risks properly and deal at least with main vulnerabilities and security “holes”.
First of all, let’s identify where to expect threats to occur.
