Pure Hacking Blog

Business owners who have some kind of internet presence fall into several different categories when it comes to paying attention to the security of their business.

The first group has nothing more than a firewall and the usual kinds of anti-virus software most people have on their home computers. The second group is a little more advanced – they recognise the threat posed by hackers and when they first started their business they took the time to get someone in to ensure their website and their systems were as secure as they could be. After that they simply carried on with developing their business.

The third group, however, has all the bases covered. Not only did they make sure their system was as invulnerable as possible to begin with, they continued to engage the services of a company who made sure it stayed that way. As a result their security levels are of the highest level, and their clients are safe in the knowledge that their data is safe with this company.

Now there is obviously some cost involved in having a company performing regular security checks on your business, but you need to ask yourself, which group would you rather be in? Either of the first two groups is laying themselves wide open to attack sooner or later.

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Data breaches occur more often than we dare to think about, and while they don’t all result in dreadful consequences it is clear that every single data breach which occurs has the potential to cause untold harm to the people whom the data relates to.

So what constitutes a data breach in the first place? If we know exactly what they entail, we stand a better chance of being able to combat them and ensure that they occur far less often, leading to better security and more peace of mind for everyone concerned.

Put simply, a data breach is any instance where something happens to make personal information viewable to a source which should not be able to see it. How that breach happens is immaterial; a data breach may occur with deliberate intent, ie. if a hacker breaks into your systems and steals the information, or it may occur by accident, for example if a computer disk containing this kind of information is lost by an employee.

It is clear then that data breaches can occur in a number of ways, which makes it vital to review your whole business structure in order to see where the vulnerabilities are when it comes to protecting data. Some aspects of this process are easy to handle. For example if you need to send confidential data on disk from one business premises to another, you need to take appropriate measures to ensure that data remains safe at all times. Finding a company which has a sterling track record in dealing with these kinds of delivery is paramount to your continued security in this area.

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What kind of risks do you think hacking poses for the average business? If you run a small to medium sized business, do you think you could ever be at risk?

It’s tempting to think that the only businesses which are really in danger of being hacked into are banks, large wealthy organisations and perhaps government sites in some instances. But nothing could be further from the truth.

While the experienced and serious hackers go for the larger targets, there are still plenty of hackers around who will go for the smaller ones, knowing that they are very likely going to be easier to break into and do damage to as a result. If you aren’t taking all the necessary steps to combat hacking, it amounts to the same thing as going out for the day and leaving your front door open behind you with all your valuables laid out on the dining room table.

Unfortunately the same air of ignorance that seems to hang over identity fraud sometimes affects hacking as well. We’d all like to think that it could never happen to us. The fact that you may be sitting in a nice warm and secure home office, making adjustments to your website on your own computer means nothing to the hacker who successfully causes you no end of trouble from their equally cosy location on the other side of the world to you.

There are different types of hacker, but they can all put your business at risk. Some will try and break in to steal personal details of your customers or make fraudulent transactions, while others simply like to cause as much trouble as possible by attaching viruses to emails and sending them to as many people as possible. If someone who works for you opens up that attachment it could be the start of problems severe enough to bring your business to a grinding halt until they are solved.

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Where there is good, there is also bad – and that certainly seems to be the case with the internet and cybercrime. The expansion of the internet and the fact that more and more businesses have an internet presence has unsurprisingly led to a similar increase in hacking and other criminal activities where data is stolen and made use of by criminals working from afar.

If you are a business owner you need to think about the amount of personal information you are asking your customers to share with you. Is it entirely necessary to have everything you are asking for? If it is, you need to make sure you are protecting your customers in every way that you can.

Some companies take the stance that they will pay for any losses derived as a result of any personal data being used or accessed by hackers, but that isn’t the right way to proceed. What message does that give to your clients? You want them to know that you are protecting them as much as possible from the word go – they don’t want to know that there is any risk at all.

It’s clear that there are plenty of potential risks to any kind of personal data held or exchanged by websites and their users, whatever the type of business may be. The worst end of the scale points to identity fraud, which can cause misery for thousands of people every year. While everyone should take adequate measures to ensure their data is safe whenever they go online, it is also the responsibility of every single business who has a website to ensure that the site is as secure as possible when it comes to taking care of their customers.

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Make no mistake – cybercrime and hacking aren’t likely to go away anytime soon. That means it’s down to you as a business owner to make sure you protect your business and computer systems in the best possible way you can, and that starts with taking an in depth look at everything you are doing, to see how safe your business really is.

Unfortunately this is where many businesses fall down on the job. They are quite literally too busy to take care of the security issues which could bring down their whole business in the space of a few hours if those issues were ever exploited.

Of those businesses who do take steps to protect themselves, the time and money invested often aren’t in proportion to the actual needs a business has. And you shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that just because your website doesn’t sell anything you aren’t at risk, because you are.

The bottom line is that hackers get through people’s defenses for all kinds of reasons. Some send malicious viruses and worms which can destroy all kinds of valuable data. Someone’s bizarre attempt at entertaining themselves can mean serious consequences for your business if you don’t take the right steps to combat them.

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