Cybercrime is more common than ever due to the impact of the COVID19 pandemic. In fact, the FBI has estimated that cybercrime has increased more than 300% since March 2020. Therefore, it is more important than ever that both individuals and businesses have more confidence in their own cybersecurity efforts. This is particularly important for businesses, as the loss of customer data can expose you to a ransomware attack. This occurs when a hacker steals your business data, including your customer data, and then tries to claim a large amount of money from you as a ransom. This often backfires as cybercriminals oftenleak the data anyway, even if you can give them the money to buy it back.
As such, it is important to take steps to avoid this scenario. To do this, your business, regardless of its size or industry, shouldmake investments in cybersecurity. This can help to approach your digital security efforts with a set plan. This is of the utmost importance and will help you in many ways, which we explain in more detail below.
Create customer confidence
Businesses only need to be one thing. And that’s the customer’s confidence. Most companies have worked for years to build a trusted brand that is not only widespread but is also recognized as trustworthy. Not taking cybersecurity seriously is a very easy way to lose customer confidence overnight, especially in the face of a ransomware attack or other kind of cyberattack. Regardless of whether your business is a physical one or is fully online, the loss of your customer’s data due to the negligence will force you to find an entirely new customer base, which can be very difficult and could potentially take years.
Data protection
Letting your customers know that you are protecting their data not only builds their confidence in your company and your brand, but also ensures that they never have to worry about the problem of a data breach. This can be done with a solution called a data room, which is securely accessible and can be used to store documents such as financial statements, customer credit card information, and contracts that you are working on with other companies.
Loss of information such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, and personal names and addresses are almost impossible to recover. Therefore, it is important that you use a secure solution to protect your customer and business data and preempt a cybercrime attempt. If you’re not entirely sure what you’re doing here, it might make sense to hire a cybersecurity professional to audit your business to see where you can improve your cybersecurity efforts beyond what you’re currently doing. This can help to prevent cybercrime and save you a lot of hassle down the road.
Small but easy changes
There is not much you need to do to at least understand the basics of cybersecurity. Small but powerful changes can be made inexpensively and can also benefit your business in the future. For example, you can use a VPN to access confidential websites like your bank accounts, and you can also use a password manager to consolidate all of your passwords for your different accounts so that they don’t get hacked.
