Your small business can be fined for as much as $50,000 today, without you doing anything wrong. If you ask yourself how that is possible, you need to read a page or two from the book of hacking. You can be fined for not protecting your PHI data properly. In other words, if a hacker steals data from you, you might be the one to blame. To learn all you need to know about hacker attacks, you would need a lot of time. However, here are the basics that you really need to know.

It Is Not All Powerful

Even hacking experts don’t want to put that extra effort into their work if it is not needed. With a lot of effort, they can solve all sorts of encryptions or break down the firewalls. In reality, they rarely do it without some very specific and big reason. It is hard work and hackers will most likely find easier targets than attack a business that is well protected. It is all about IT skills and imagination – it is not magic. Therefore, don’t believe that those people are more powerful than they really are.

Not All of It Is Bad

Not all of the hacker attacks are bad. At times, people and companies hire hackers to attack some of the websites and systems, so that they could find their weak spots and come up with a stronger protection plan. The IT experts work from the inside, but a real time simulation in real life conditions to test these professionals is priceless.

That is why the pCloud company decided to organize the hacker challenge. They offered $20, 000 in cash or BitCoins for anybody who could open the encrypted folder and see what is inside of it. In that way, they could be sure that the participants would be many and that they would find any sort of access that their IT experts failed to predict.

Your Weak Spots

To be able to protect yourself, you need to know all about your weak spots. You need to mind the worms that come into your system and spread around the network. Malware threats are particularly devastating to small businesses because they steal information and destroy servers. Phishing steals info about contacts, names, and credit card numbers. You need strong passwords, firewalls, encryptions, and more than anything else – responsible online behavior.

Ways of Protection

You need to educate the employees before anything else. This means getting them to learn how to maintain privacy and security of the company. Moreover, enforce security protocols and make sure everybody knows about them within your company. You also need hardware and software firewalls. Antivirus and Antispyware software is essential for your security today. The best thing to do is to move everything you can on the cloud to protect it and to have a team of professionals taking care of its security.

You need to do all you can to protect your company from any potential cybercrime risks. However, besides that, you also need to have a plan about what to do if something like that happens. Damage control is just as important and backing up your data is always a good idea. With effective prevention and a good damage control plan, your business will be safe and well for a long time.

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