As a business owner today, you are now facing unprecedented challenges to help deal with the coronavirus pandemic. You are asked to self-isolate and practice social distancing to “flatten the curve.” You are asked to allow your employees to work from home to reduce possible exposure and slow the spread of COVID-19.
The world is slowing down during this COVID-19 pandemic. Wall Street is being hit hard. People are no longer going out. We’re told to quarantine or self-isolate and not engage in groups.
You can bet there’s one group that’s not slowing down at all.
Stop using your passwords and make this one simple change for a more secure life
The Protected Voices initiative was launched by the FBI to help safeguard against online "foreign influence" operations along with cybersecurity threats. With input from the FBI itself, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, it's a goldmine of essential guidance and advice on everything from social engineering through to incident response.
Many cybercriminals look at small businesses like blank checks. More often than not, small businesses just don’t put money into their cyber security, and hackers and cybercriminals love those odds. They can target small businesses at random, and they are all but guaranteed to find a business that has no IT security – or the business does have some security but it isn’t set up correctly.
Jesse Itzler is a man of many talents. He spoke at a recent conference this past fall and brought a lot of great business insight with him. Itzler got his start as a rapper in the early ’90s. He worked with artists including Tone Lōc, wrote a song that made it to the Billboard Hot 100 (“Shake It Like A White Girl”) and wrote and sang the New York Knicks theme song, “Go NY Go.” He then went on to write the theme songs for over 50 other professional sports teams.
Cybercriminals love to test your defenses. They love to see how far they can get into the networks ofbusinesses all over the globe. Cybercriminals really love going after small businesses because they can all too often sneak onto a network, copy data and move on. Through the use of ransomware, they can hold your data hostage and refuse to cooperate until you pay them some amount of dollars – and if you don’t pay up, they threaten to delete all your data.
How much do you rely on your IT services provider? It’s startling to think that a lot of small businesses outsource their IT (which is a good thing), only to get little to nothing out of that relationship.
Why is that?
Well, some businesses just aren’t proactive.
A lot of businesses need to come to terms with the fact that their employees are their greatest IT threat. As a business owner, you may be aware of cyberthreats to your business, but your employees might not be. They might not know about the threat of cyber-attacks or malware.
This past June, I got to hear the one and only Daymond John speak at a small private event. You may know Daymond as a successful entrepreneur who has appeared on the hit ABC show Shark Tank. Best known as the founder of the clothing brand, FUBU, he is also the author of The Power of Broke — an insightful look into his life and what he did to find success.
What is standing between your business’s data and hackers a world away? What’s your plan when your on-site server fails?
When you skimp on technology and IT solutions for your business, the answers to these two questions are simple:
There is nothing standing between your business’s sensitive data and people who want to take advantage of that data; and
There is no plan.
