Cyber Crime: 3 Infographics that Prove Your Business is at Risk

As an online-based business, you have many perks. Whether it’s working as an affiliate marketer and being able to run your business from anywhere (as long as you have an internet connection), to not needing to hire staff or even pay for a retail location… it’s all glitz and glamor when things are going well.

However, in today’s world of technology and everything being accessed through the internet, disaster can strike at a moments notice — this is especially true when talking about Cyber Crime.

Billions of dollars are spent on protection, repair and damages from cyber crime every single month. What’s even more terrifying is that it doesn’t matter if you are a huge multi-billion dollar company or a single entrepreneur working from the comfort of your own home — everyone is at risk!

In this set of cyber crime infographics, we are going to take a look at some of the best ways to protect your business, trends to look for, best methods for protecting your reputation and much more.

Small Businesses are at a Much Greater Risk with Cyber Attacks

To kick things off, let’s get one thing straight — cyber crime isn’t something that only big businesses have to struggle with. In fact, small and mid-sized businesses actually have more at risk and it’s been found to cost smaller businesses even more in damages and repairs.

In this infographic from Get Cyber Safe, we take a look at the many reasons why smaller businesses are at much more risk when it comes to online cyber crimes and attacks. One of the major reasons for this statement is that an estimated 40% of a small businesses’ worth is derived from the information that it owns. How protect is you company and customer data?

The Growing Trends of Online Cyber Crime

While most people think of “cyber crimes” as simply stealing sensitive customer information and business data, it’s actually expanded into much more as the internet and technology continue to consume our everyday lives. With more people and businesses now having their own websites and blogs, it’s much easier for hackers to go after thousands of sites and hit any that might have open vulnerabilities. Something as simple as not having a secure login page or outdated WordPress plugins can result in an open door for anyone trying to get in. Based off the stats from this “Growing Trend of Cyber Crime” infographic from Achieve Internet, 8 out of 10 sites have serious vulnerabilities and more than 73% of all Americans and 69% of the global population are at risk for a cyber crime at any given time.

 

The experts at Trend Micro, one of those cybercrime security leaders, have this to say:

The arms race between law enforcement and threat actors will only continue to intensify, and we can expect more marketplaces and tools to make their appearance and advance the state of the art in this field. Cybercrime is being successfully fought on a level beyond door locks and police reports. Secure your critical systems with the latest cyber defenses. Don’t stop locking your doors, but you will have to combat cybercrime with cyber crime fighting tools.

How Easily is Your Personal Information Accessed Online

You can’t talk about cyber crime and personal information without mentioning reputation management. The concept of reputation management is a lot more than just trying to clean up a bad reputation, instead it’s about being aware of how your information is displayed online, what appears in the search results and also in social media. It’s one thing for a hacker to need to break into a website or database to steal your information, but it’s just dead simple for them to harvest any data that you might already have publicly floating around out there. For this reason, I always recommend people to Google themselves. This should be done not only to see what appears at the top of Google for your name but to also see what other sites might come up on page 2, 3, 4 and even page 5 that you didn’t know where out there. To help with this process, be sure to check out this infographic and take the Google Yourself Challenge.

 

Protecting Your Online Business and Personal Identity

While you might not be able to protect yourself and your data from cyber crimes and attacks on other companies, you can do something about building a protective wall around your name and brand. There are plenty of data protection services out there like LifeLock that will actively monitor your name, credit score and other information should they get pinged after an unexpected attack or leak.

At the same time, you should be actively protecting your business from any potential vulnerabilities as well. As mentioned earlier, this can be as simple as keeping your websites and databases updated with the latest software/plugin versions. Resetting your password and making sure they are quite complex is another easy way to protect your data. You’d be surprised at how many people are still using really easy to guess passwords like “password”!

Cyber crime isn’t going away anytime soon and it’s just going to be more common for individuals and small businesses to be on the radar of every hacker and criminal out there. Implement these tips into your business and daily life to protect yourself from future attacks and loss of data.