How SMBs can secure their data?

With each passing year, we witness how the importance of cyber security grows not just for Fortune 500 companies, but for SMBs and individuals. The latest survey performed by Insureon where Akruto Inc. founder, George Tatar, was featured as one of contributors, reveals shocking data: one in five small-business owners does not use any antivirus software and two in three business owners update their OS and software packages only “sometimes” or “never”.

Insureon is America’s largest and leading small business insurance agency ranked #107 on Inc. magazine’s annual list of the 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the United States. Company provides small businesses with the peace of mind of industry-leading customer service and opportunity to cut insurance costs by getting policies that truly match your risks – without paying for extra insurance you don’t need.

This shocking statement shows how big the problem is at the moment and how unprotected business owners are against cyber-attacks, especially when they believe they are safe. With all the ransomware attacks, recently announced 500 million Yahoo accounts hack and the increasing number of identity thefts, business owners should pay extreme attention to the matters of keeping their sensitive information safe.

That is why at Akruto we dedicate so many efforts to developing a secure and reliable software for syncing sensitive Outlook data with iOS, Android or Windows Phone devices.

How to secure your business data from being hacked

Here are some basic rules any small business owner can follow to reduce the possibility of their business being hacked:

• Pay attention to educating your staff to use the latest software.
• Give different access levels and security permissions to the different groups of employees. With services like LastPass, you can manage groups of employees and share business-related credentials to your employees without actually giving them any passwords.
• Never use the same passwords for personal and business accounts – hacking one grants automatic your other accounts that have the same password, like it was with 500 million Yahoo accounts hack mentioned above when all passwords and answers to the security questions were compromised and became publicly accessible.
• Create passwords that are easy to remember but harden them with at least one number, capital letter or symbol. It is much harder to guess something like B**stEv#rP@ssword, then something like BestPassword, but is almost as easy to remember.
• Consider using a password manager – in this case, you only have to create one strong password and all other passwords will be autogenerated and will look like this A7cfA&^C%A&f5c.