It is no surprise that cybersecurity is crucial for the smooth continuity of a business as much as other elements are. If statistics are to be believed, 90% of businesses are targeted via phishing attacks resulting in approximately $12 billion of losses every year.
Also, small businesses have a higher risk since hackers find them easy to target. But that doesn’t mean bigger giants are left out since they are always on the radar of sophisticated cybercriminals. Thus, we have written this article with common yet essential ways to protect your business from cybercrime and fraud.
Ways to Protect Your Business From Cybercrime and Fraud
The best advice to protect your business would be to stay proactive in understanding the cybersecurity landscape for your industry and staying a step ahead of threats. While all specific instances cannot be covered here, we present the general idea regarding security, where expertise can be achieved with detailed research.
Protecting from Insider Threats
Businesses must mandate a zero trust policy and role-based access control to ensure that employees have only as much access as required to produce deliverables.
Severe impacts arising from insider threats can be evaded by implementing strict permissions, background checks and screening of employees, tracking employee activities, and regular audits.
Awareness Amongst the Staff and the Customers
Humans are the weakest link in cybersecurity due to a lack of awareness. Cybersecurity incidents are often caused when an insider turns rogue or unknowingly reveals confidential information that cybercriminals leverage.
Lack of cybersecurity awareness includes using vulnerable and outdated software, weak passwords, and insecure data storage.
Businesses can evaluate their employees’ awareness by simulating phishing and social engineering attacks. Companies can also roll out the upto date news in cyberspace along with steps to mitigate such attacks on an individual level.
Vigilant About the Third-Party Vendors
Sharing data and rights should be monitored by businesses. In the event of a security incident with the vendors, ensuring minimal impact on the major company should be ensured.
Understanding the vendors’ security structure and the exchange of data also becomes critical to safeguarding our company.
Cybersecurity Policies
Implementing a strong set of principles and documentation that provides an approach to risks, threats, and business continuity plans can ensure that cybercrime and fraud incidents are handled professionally.
The three areas of cybersecurity policies address systems, programs, and issue-specific. Policies can also enlist access controls, risk management, vulnerability testing frequency, data availability, and data security measures to bridge the gaps commonly targeted by hackers.
Monitoring Alerts and Anomalies Within the Network
A dedicated team that sits and monitors the network comes in handy when a suspicious file or IP tries to intrude into the infrastructure. A team can validate the affected host and take necessary measures to identify the root cause of the issue.
Businesses with a dedicated team to hunt threats not only safeguard when an ongoing attack is going on but also be proactive in case of future events.
Using Antiviruses, EDRs, and Firewalls
Implementing defensive solutions to monitor data incoming and outgoing from our infrastructure’s network is essential. Smart EDRs, firewalls, and antiviruses are updated with the latest malware signatures and constantly scan files to match similar patterns.
This can help businesses to identify similar malicious campaigns targeting their industry along with the latest trends of cyberattacks and safeguard themselves.
Prominent antivirus solutions are:
- McAfee
- Kaspersky
- QuickHeal
Prominent firewall solutions are:
- Cisco
- NetGear
- Fortinet
Additional Services to Avoid Financial Fraud
Consider using fraud prevention services, such as identity theft protection and credit monitoring, to help detect and prevent fraud. Businesses can encourage maximizing the use of virtual credit card numbers, which are unique and one-time-use numbers linked to your account, making it harder for fraudsters to steal your credit card information.
Anomalies in the Finances
Regular auditing of the accounts can help detect financial fraud before it becomes a more significant threat to a business. Keeping minimum access of the employees to finances and actively tracking their activities should be a frequent activity.
While the threats may not be internal only, scammers may try to impersonate a company and provide fake payment gateways to execute a scam. This can be solely targeted to the employees and customers of a company with sophisticated techniques to avoid detection.
Active Eye on Threats
Cybercriminals can use techniques of hosting fake websites, causing brand harm to your businesses. That includes social media pages, illegal customer care services, unauthorized dealerships, and bank accounts to receive money. Being vigilant about such threats regularly and taking them down before they establish a fake campaign is critical.
Businesses can request customers to report such fake instances via email or real-time sharing platforms such as Twitter to take prompt action.
As We Conclude
Nearing the end of this article about ‘Ways to Protect Your Business From Cybercrime and Fraud,’ we addressed all the essential areas of implementing security to safeguard from online threats such as phishing, carding, social engineering, and hacking.
With the proper steps in each sector, businesses can significantly reduce the risks on their infrastructure and protect themselves from the constantly evolving hacking techniques.
Author Bio: This article has been written by Rishika Desai, B.Tech Computer Engineering graduate with 9.57 CGPA from Vishwakarma Institute of Information Technology (VIIT), Pune. Currently works as Cyber Threat Researcher at CloudSEK. She is a good dancer, poet and a writer. Animal love engulfs her heart and content writing comprises her present. You can follow Rishika on Twitter at @ich_rish99.