Protecting a small business from e-crime

Tuesday, 10 June 2008

A survey suggests small businesses need to be more aware of growing electronic crime threat.

A new You Gov survey into British UK small business attitudes to operational business anxieties reveals that technology not working (42 per cent of all respondents) is the number one work issue that causes anxiety, alongside with difficult clients and suppliers (42 per cent) which cause the same level of concern.

Heavy workloads (30 per cent), tight deadlines (26 per cent) and long hours (19 per cent) were the next highest ranking issues causing concern.

The survey commissioned by Trend Micro, a global leader in internet content security, also asked small businesses about their anxiety regarding business-related crime.

Fear of theft and office break-ins ranked low as issues causing most anxiety, with 9 per cent of all respondents ranking this as a top three concern.

There were some regional variations, however, with more than one in ten London respondents (13 per cent) saying business crime was one of their top three concerns.

This compared with 3 per cent of Scottish respondents. Anxiety over loss of confidential data was more of a general concern with one in ten of all businesses worried about this; respondents in London and Midlands/Wales registered a slightly higher level of concern (12 per cent).

When asked about electronic crime, the majority of all respondents (83 per cent) said they had not been a victim of electronic crime in the last 12 months.

Hidden attacks

Once again there were some interesting regional anomalies with 18 per cent of Scottish respondents saying they had suffered at least one incident in the last year.

This low rate of reported incidents among small businesses comes as the recorded volume of electronic crime attacks grows and is increasingly targeted at small businesses that do not necessary have the resources or systems to protect themselves.

A further worry is that these attacks are hidden and many small businesses may not know when an electronic crime is being committed. For example, in May 2008 over half a million websites were infected with malicious code.

Most of these were small business websites typically made up of old and unsecured coding and running on older or unpatched web server and operating systems.

These sites are easy targets for cyber criminals looking to hijack commercial websites for financial gain and identity fraud. Most of the UK businesses affected were sole-traders relying on their web presence for revenue generation.

Web as a must-have resource

Paul Burke, SME product marketing manager EMEA at Trend Micro, says that information technology problems top the list of everyday anxieties for small businesses.

The survey also suggests that more needs to be done to better inform and help the small business community in respect of the new generation of security threats that are attacking their IT infrastructure silently and with potentially devastating effects to their reputation and finances.

Entrepreneurs often start small businesses for the freedom of independence, but this carries responsibility. For many small businesses, the Web is a must-have resource to remain competitive.

Businesses of all sizes are seeing a rise in mobile workers, telecommuters and travelling employees. At the same time, small businesses may be daunted by the perceived resources it takes to secure their systems.

Small businesses generally do not have the luxury of a full IT staff to counter the mounting number, types and complexity of web based threats.

Effective passwords

Small business owners are held accountable for their customer’s stolen data including billing and financial information.

Trend Micro has a number of tips for SME managers to prevent their organisation falling victim to e-crime:

Ensure that all employees use effective passwords, and when possible, stronger authentication technology. Encourage passwords that are made up of different upper and lower case letters characters and change them every 60 to 70 days.

Discourage employee downloads from untrusted sources such as peer-to-peer and video and ensure that the latest software updates are completed on each PC/laptop.

Protect your network. Ensure that PCs and laptops are protected by firewalls, anti-virus software and web threat protection both within the office network as well as while mobile working and while using wireless networks both inside and outside of the office.

Keep all software up-to-date. Without updates, your systems will not be well protected against new cyber threats.

Create and manage back-ups. Store secured copies and use encryption to protect sensitive records about employees, suppliers and customers.

Maximise encryption. Protect customer data by encrypting it with passwords or encryption keys to minimise fraud.

Don’t leave sensitive data saved on a handheld or mobile device, in case it is stolen or lost.

Keep in mind that your company will grow, and shop for security solutions that will grow with your business’s pace.