Cyber threats to businesses have recently picked up new fears and liabilities in the age of the pandemic. With more employees working from home, it’s becoming ever more imperative for IT departments and third-party technology contractors to prevent and lockdown threats as they arise.
That’s difficult to do if you’re uncertain of where the threats are most likely to come from and spread. In the following article, we’ll be looking at the five biggest cyber threats to businesses like yours. Let’s begin!
1. Lazy Passwords
Lazy passwords have long presented a significant network security risk. If your organization doesn’t have forced password changes every 30-90 days and two-factor authentication, then you’re leaving a big hole in your cybersecurity detection system.
Just one “abc123,” “password,” or “employee name followed by birthday,” is enough to sink your ship. Make sure employees are choosing long passwords, that they’re mixing it up with capital and lower-case letters, and that they’re incorporating numbers and special characters into every password.
Even then, it may not be enough. If you can add two-factor authentication to the mix, do it. This method of logging in will send an authentication code to your employee’s separate device once the password has been entered, making it doubly difficult for a hacker to get into your systems.
2. Outdated Software
Perhaps the greatest cyber threat to business systems that’s avoidable is the outdated software patch. These days, the software you need to run your business is updated frequently to discourage malicious actors.
If you don’t have updates set to run automatically, however, you could be leaving a huge vulnerability just from your oversight to run a manual update. Don’t let those software patches get away from you!
3. Malicious Actors
Another significant cybersecurity risk is also one of the most common, and that’s the malicious actors themselves. They can come at you in many forms.
- Phishing scams
- Malware
- Targeted viruses or worms
- Trojan keystroke loggers
They’re each one still around because they’re so effective. More on that in the next section.
4. User Carelessness
The biggest network security risks you’ll ever face are your employees. Most do not have cybersecurity on the brain when they show up for work. While more are now aware of some of the risks, employee carelessness with things like the aforementioned malware and phishing scams account for as much as 80 percent of successful attacks.
5. The Company You Keep
Last on our list of security risks is one you should definitely be more mindful of since no one operates in a vacuum. We’re talking about the company (or companies) with which you do business.
These can be vendors or customers or even businesses with whom you share a server. (One of the big reasons we recommend dedicated server hosting is so you can control how technology is used on your server.)
Bottom line: if they aren’t taking cybersecurity seriously, then you are at risk. The scary thing: it can happen through no fault of your own and without you even knowing anything is amiss until it’s too late.
These Cyber Threats to Businesses Are Not Going Away
We hope this look at the many cyber threats to businesses has gotten you thinking about where you might be vulnerable. For more technology tips and advice, check out some of our additional posts!
