Cybercrime and How it Affects Business Start-ups & SMEs

Cybercrime affects both big and small businesses. Therefore it is paramount to have a good understanding on cyber-attacks and its impact on businesses especially if you are an aspiring entrepreneur, a start-up, or a small to medium sized business.

Cybercrime involves any illegal activity carried out using computers or the internet by individuals or groups of people. Phishing is a common type of cyber-attack and like most other types of cybercrime; it shares a common goal, i.e. getting you to share sensitive information such as user login credentials, bank account details, credit card information etc. With this type of attack, hackers impersonate a real company to obtain your login details. You may receive an email asking you to verify your account details with a link that takes you to an imposter login screen that delivers your information directly to the hackers.

To prevent phishing:

• Avoid clicking on links or attachments from senders that you do not recognize. Be wary of .zip or other compressed or executable file types.
• Watch for email senders that use suspicious or misleading domain names.
• Do not provide sensitive personal information like usernames and passwords over the email.
• Inspect URLs carefully to make sure that they are legitimate and not imposter websites.
• Take caution when opening attachments, avoid clicking links if you receive an email containing a warning banner indicating that it originated form an external source.
• Do not try to open any shared document that you weren’t expecting to receive.

Other types of cyber-attacks may come inform of malware infection or hacking extortion. This too rely on you opening the vulnerability yourself e.g. by clicking a link or downloading an attachment that contains malicious malware that can open your computer up to intrusion or shut it down until you pay a ransom.

Having an understanding about these types of cyber-attacks and their impact on business can help you put in place measures to protect your business from cybercrime. Cybercrime can negatively impact your business income, reputation and cause intellectual property damage.

Cyber-attacks can impede the growth of a small business especially when it leads to financial loss or in cases where a cyber-attack stole your company marketing ideas, product ideas, your business may lose the competitive edge it had over other businesses. In fact some cyber-attacks can cause financial obligations that the business may not be able to meet hence completely leading to the closure of the business.

With high number of cyber-crime cases still being reported, it is important for start-ups, small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to take the necessary steps to reduce these cases. Educating yourself on cybercrime is one of the steps that you need to take in addition to implementing cyber security measures to prevent cyber-crime attacks on your business.

Related: How to Not Let Cybercrime Impact Your Business

For entrepreneurs and start-ups making an investment in cyber security might not be feasible at the start, but you can start by looking for information on cybercrime online – educating yourself on the current cyber-attacks as you plan on how you will invest in top quality cybersecurity in future when you have the finances to do so.