With Christmas approaching, many of us are turning to the internet to get our Christmas shopping done quickly, avoiding the crowds and queues in town! And from a business point of view, it’s likely to be one of the busiest times for you. Whatever your industry, it’s likely you have Christmas offers and January sales planned or in place, and you’re using your website to promote this. But whilst you’re planning your extra bandwidth, making sure you have extra stock in and have the staff to cope with the extra demand, have you thought about your cyber security?
Christmas is a busy time for cyber crime
December and January are busy months for cyber crime. Hackers and cyber criminals are primed to take advantage of the season’s good cheer and business owners’ perhaps more relaxed approach, when their minds are on family time and looking forward to a boost in sales, rather than on the look out for hacks to their systems.
But it’s not just during the winter months. The National Crime Agency states that organised crime has been quick to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the Internet, particularly the growth in e-commerce and online banking.
Do you know the types of cyber crime?
Criminals target people and businesses alike. Consumers are subject to bogus emails asking for personal details, files and webcams being taken over, Adclickers directing a person to a specific link then releasing viruses and keylogging where bank details can be recorded then used to make unauthorised payments in your name. Businesses are susceptible to these too, as well as hacking when specialist software is placed on a computer to gain unauthorised access to computer networks and systems and take administrative control of these; and Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks which stop legitimate access to your website swamping your site with masses of traffic so that genuine users are unable to access the service.
Is your business protected?
Usually larger organisations have teams in-place to deal with cyber protection, however, smaller and medium sized businesses may not have had the time or made it a priority to make sure theirs is up to scratch. It’s so important that you do, and quickly as figures released in the 2018 Cyber Security Breach Survey revealed that 42% of small business identified security breaches or attacks in the previous 12 months with this figure increasing to 65% for medium-sized companies. You don’t want your businesses to be at a risk of a cyber attack which could damage both your reputation and growth.
Who can help?
We were delighted to support Amwell Information Security refresh the customer journey on their website and realign some of their key points to ensure their essential service was fully explained. They specialise in helping smaller companies deal with the growing demands of cyber security and data protection. We suggest taking a look at their website to see how they can help you.