The human factor is something every SME can take immediate action without a significant investment of money or time. The IT team be they internal or external have to be trusted to put in place anti virus, firewalls, patches etc. But fraudsters prey on the vulnerability of a busy team member focused on doing their job but liable to make a mistake regarding cyber risks.
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- Awareness – Train your team on cyber security, what does a phishing email look like for example? Create awareness training. Online providers such as Udemy have courses ready to be watched by your team.
- Testing – Have your IT provider send some fake non malicious emails to see does your team member click on that potentially dangerous link. Link the test back to future training.
- Passwords – Choose strong passwords and don’t reuse them for multiple logins. Strong passwords use special characters and they do not use numbers in order like 123456.
There are a lot other important more technical necessities but don’t ignore the low hanging fruit above.
ODK is a firm of accountants based in Cork and specializing in advising SME and family business clients.