Recognizing Five Small Business Security Threats
For the many small businesses wading through the waters of information technology, there are many dangers waiting to strike. And while those dangers can only really be effectively navigated by information security consultants, today, we want to help identify five major security threats most organizations face.
The following security threats come courtesy of information security expert James Michael Stewart and are those which pose the greatest likelihood and risk of compromising your business.
1. Stealing passwords. Passwords continue to remain a widely contested security measure, opponents often citing the numerous flaws found with password protection. For instance, strong passwords involving numbers, letters, and symbols are often too complicated for employees to memorize meaning the same password will often be written down in obvious places and/or used for multiple accounts.
2. Trojan Horses. These attacks involve hackers hiding malicious software within a benign program. An unsuspecting employee will execute such a program and often, without detection, cause a security breach. This could result in anything from the malicious software destroying important data, copying keystrokes, or gaining remote access.
3. Wireless Attacks. Many people are drawn to the convenience of wireless networks because they’re, well, wire-less. Unfortunately, no wires opens another host of security risks that many wi-fi owners are unaware of including DOS attacks, interference, hijacking, eavesdropping, etc.
4. Inside Job. As Stewart points out, the inside job manifests itself in one of two ways. First, someone deceptively gains the trust of an organization with intent to harm. Second, a current employee becomes disgruntled and uses privileges to enact revenge. Either spells disaster.
5. Default settings. The beauty of default settings is that the work is already done for you, optimizing our culture’s plug-and-play syndrome. However, failing to change or customize default settings can often play right into the hands of a hacker, many of who operate assuming nothing has been altered.
As you can see, these threats pose potentially serious risks to your business. On the upside, these particular threats can be easily prevented. Now that we’ve identified these major risks in detail, in our next post we’ll examine the best ways to prevent and combat the threats.
[photo: Brad & Ying]
Additional Resources:
Protecting Your Business Against Scareware
How to Protect Your Business Against Limited Data Access
Tags: Computer network security, data security, information security, information technology, secure wireless networks, Small Business IT, small business it security, strong passwords