What is a cyber security breach & how to protect your business from it?

A cyber security breach happens when an unauthorised entity gains access to your confidential data, networks, devices, and applications. Once they successfully get around your security, they will have access to your information which they can use for various illegal activities such as identity theft or credit damage.

Cyber security breaches are serious criminal offences. Aside from your personal information, they may also access your medical and transaction records or use your banking accounts and use it for unauthorised purchases. But not all is lost. Cyber security breaches can be prevented and mitigated.

The best way to prevent malware breaches from harming your business is cyber security. Rather than treating it as an option only when something terrible happens, you should consider it as a proactive approach that will pay off in the long run. The key is to partner with a managed cyber security provider that understands your business and implements solutions that secures your assets in the best way possible.

Common types of cyber security attacks

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are more at risk of cyber security breaches than large corporations. Even with this fact, most SMBs don’t put cyber security protocols in place. We still see too many businesses seek out cyber security solutions only when they’ve been breached.

Waiting for breaches to happen is a dangerous route for your business. Once your data is exposed, it’s out there for the bad guys to exploit. And that’s only one of the many aftermaths of a successful cyber security breach.

Protect your business data by starting with the common causes of cyber security breaches:

Malware attacks

Malware doesn’t discriminate against who it hits. Whether it’s a personal computer or a corporation’s local network, it will attempt to infiltrate anything it can get its hands on.

Phishing emails are one of the many ways to spread malware from one recipient to another. All it takes is one click on the wrong link, and it will start to expand doom throughout your device and network.

Human error 

Human error makes up more than half of cyber security breach causes. According to a cyber security report by IBM, human error is the cause of 95% of all security breaches.

Cyber security breaches from human error can be from using weak passwords, unknowingly sending confidential data to the wrong people, interacting with malware-infected emails and messages, or sharing credentials.

The best prevention against it is to conduct regular security awareness training for your employees. Signup for our security awareness training and learn the best ways to protect your data online from a Cyber Technical Specialist.

Social Engineering

Social engineering is the most used tactic by criminals to spread cyberattacks or manipulates users into sharing their confidential information, such as banking credentials. This tactic can either be through email, text messages or phone calls.

How to protect yourself from social engineering attacks:

• Be mindful of the messages or calls you receive
• Double-check email addresses, URLs, and the sender
• Ignore any requests for personal information or account credentials
• Install trusty anti-virus software, firewall, and spam filter
• Training, training, training and more training

Things to do after a cyber security breach

In case you’ve fallen victim to cyber security breach, the steps below will help you mitigate the effects of the attack:

Engage in cyber insurance (if you got one)

Cyber insurance protects you from the after-effects of a data breach.

Cyber security breaches are not typically included in the general liability insurance since it only covers physical and property damage from your products. Cyber liability insurance, on the other hand, will cover data breach damages such as loss of confidential customer information.

According to Nationwide, cyber insurance will cover your legal fees and expenses, recover stolen data, reinstate lost data, repair computer systems, and inform customers about a breach.

There are so many cyber-attacks out there that it's still too risky not to have cyber insurance even if you have one of the most sophisticated IT security strategies.

Confirm and contain the breach

Once you’ve detected a breach, you must act quickly to lessen the damage.

Find out the type of attack and then, monitor your accounts for a few days or weeks to discover any unauthorised activities.

Refrain from deleting anything. It’s best to preserve as much evidence as possible about the breach and the people involved. But ensure that you isolate the infected device from the rest to prevent infecting the others. You can do that by disconnecting the device from your internet or disabling any remote access to it.

Change the passwords of all affected accounts. Use strong and unique passwords on every account. Enable multi-factor authentication to strengthen your security even further.

Assess the security breach

Determine which of your data was stolen to assess the severity of the situation so you can implement the best solution. Include employee, customer, and third-party vendors in your assessment as well.

Then, check if any information such as email addresses, bank accounts, home and P.O. box addresses are stolen. Take note that having your government information, such as your health records and tax details, can bring more damage than having your social media credentials stolen.

It’s best to ignore any requests that ask for your data because there’s a chance it may be an attempt to hack into your system. Double-check all details to confirm if they are from a legitimate business.

Control the aftermath

Transparency with your staff is essential in operational emergencies like a cyber security breach.

The goal here is to reduce the damage and recover from the breach by defining the responsibilities of each team member. Have a clear understanding of the process to recover the business as soon as possible.

If you’ve identified that your financial data was breached, notify your banks and financial institutions about it and request a credit freeze. You can also change the passwords on all your banking and financial accounts and implement multi-layer authentication. Check your banking and credit report from time to time to ensure that no one is illegally using your details.

How to prevent a cyber security breach in the future

Taking the preventive approach to cyber security breaches is always the best option whether you’re a small to medium-sized business or a multi-national corporation. The steps below will help you reduce your risk of cyber attacks like ransomware now and in the future:

Only use strong and unique passwords

All your predictable passwords need to go. Instead of using the usual “12345” and “admin” as your password, replace them with long and random combinations of numbers, symbols, and upper- and lower-case letters. We recommend that you use unique passwords for each of your accounts.

We know that remembering them is challenging. You can use a password manager to keep all your passwords securely in one place.

Always keep an up-to-date backup of your files

Cyberattacks like ransomware hold your data hostage by encrypting your files. And you’ll get them back if you pay the ransom demand. We recommend that you keep an up-to-date cloud and external backup, separate from your local environment to keep your data safe in case of a breach from a ransomware attack.

Recommended Reading: What to do if your company gets hit with a ransomware attack

Use anti-virus and anti-malware software

Whether for personal or business use, your computers should have anti-viral and anti-malware software. These applications ensure that your devices are clean and free from infection or any hidden trojans waiting to attack.

Office Solutions IT offers both anti-virus and anti-spam solutions on cyber security services. Talk to one of our cyber security experts today so you can keep hackers away from your system.

Enable auto-update on your operating system and applications

Any system defects in your computer usually come from unpatched and outdated software, and it is a hacker’s goal to find any defects. Once they detect it, they then create a piece of code packaged into malware so they can bypass your security and access your data.

Software companies push updates to fix security vulnerabilities and errors. Understandably, these updates can be a nuisance from time to time, but they’re an essential component to keeping yourself safe from cybercriminals out there.

We recommend that you enable automatic system and application updates, so your computer is always protected from any security flaws or bugs.

Think before you click

Socially engineered messages pressure you into giving up your personal information such as login credentials, social security numbers, bank accounts, and birthdays.

Be wary of any type of communication, whether email, text messages or phone calls, from people you don’t recognise.

If you want to make sure, you can have your IT team see to it just in case an attachment or website contains malware just waiting to be activated.

Constant vigilance and monitoring

Protecting your business from cyberattacks is an ongoing battle. Sadly, it doesn't stop with anti-virus software, firewalls, and proper security implementations. Cyber security risk management should also take part in your long-term business plan to find any vulnerabilities in your IT before the bad guys find them first. 

Having your data stolen doesn’t mean that you’re immediately under a breach. Sometimes, those criminals would put your data up for sale. Most Australian businesses have no idea their credentials might be for sale on the Dark Web at this very moment. All it takes is for one hacker to purchase your credentials and compromise your account to be used for a variety of reasons.

You can run a Dark Web Scan by Office Solutions IT on your business domain to check if any of your employees’ credentials are for sale.