Member Article

Small Business Cyber Security

Since the recent WannaCry ransomware style cyber-attack to rock the world, we’ve been inundated with calls and emails from businesses concerned with their IT safety, says Ben Solomon of Octavian IT.

Their downfall is either the lack of properly configured networks, up-to-scratch security hardware and software or ineffective (or non-existent) user awareness training.

We constantly come into contact with business networks today that are worryingly unprotected and vulnerable when it comes to being able to fend off or survive this new kind of threat.

These new sophisticated malicious attacks, including variants of ransomware and spear phishing, must be defended against in the correct way for effective prevention and continuation of business. Otherwise other efforts are pointless.

Size Doesn’t MatterOver the recent years it has become more and more apparent that the creators of these malicious attacks do not target based on organisation size.

It’s a numbers game to them, they’ll send the illegitimate email out to as many businesses as they can hit in one go. It doesn’t matter to them. They don’t need to target the ‘Blue Chips’.

They simply know the facts - that there are a huge, huge number of under-protected organisations out there, and they only have to successfully extract money from a few for it to be worth it. Leaving most of the others still suffering in some way or another, even if they don’t need to make the payment to get their data back.

“Small businesses are just as vulnerable as the big ones.” It’s not possible to just think that you can hide your business away from the attackers out there on the net. If you are connected to the internet, you have an “attack surface” open to anyone that wants to try to “hack” you or carry out some illegitimate action.

What to do NextProactivity and prevention are the most effective ways to reduce your chances of being impacted by an attack such as these, plus help your business recover should you be hit. Octavian is founded on security and attack prevention principles. It’s at our core and has been for 15 years, from physical to cyber.

We have the knowledge, the expertise and modern tools to combat these threats correctly and our software and methods are actively protecting businesses successfully as we speak. Our ‘net’ protection technique for protecting businesses and their IT networks (comprising of multiple layers of security, or, nets) is the most effective technique for decreasing business risk bar none and we can prove this.

Our net protection approach uses the technique of multiple “layers” or nets set in place at different levels of your network to catch malicious activity. That is why it is such a strong method of protecting your business.

An example of our 4 basic and essential layers are below: • Layer 1: Email security filtering • Layer 2: Web content and DNS filtering • Layer 3: Endpoint Security (server/computer anti-malware software) • Layer 4: User awareness training

This model is also extremely cost effective and can be achieved easily for any business with minimal disruption. That’s why it is so successful!

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Laura Jones .