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Businesses have faced many challenges over the last few months, and with more employees working from home, its topical to look at how cybercrime has been threatening companies and their workforce. Gary Martin, Director at David Allen IT Solutions discusses the issue and what can be done to protect your business and its data.

Over the past six months, we have observed a vast increase in cybercrime related threats, including an increased number of Phishing emails being blocked by our spam filters.  The latest figures from Action Fraud, the national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime, already shows a loss of over £2 million just for Coronavirus related reports. Many cybercrimes go unreported so the true picture could be much worse.

While some businesses were already adapting to working from home policies, others had the change forced upon them very quickly, and had to act fast to ensure business continuity.

With a lack of preparation, and the rapid need for access to corporate data from home, weak security was in some cases used to access that data, creating a security hole to be exploited by attackers.

For our customers, they were able to rely on our services to carefully identify and support their specific needs. Where a client did not already have a remote working solution in place, we ensured that they had secure access to their data and were able to work safely from home.

Its worth considering what you might need to do to ensure you have not placed your business at risk in the haste to get everybody working efficiently and effectively from home. Things to consider include:

• Is your password policy strong enough? With new accounts being set up, weak passwords can place you at risk.
• Are your corporate firewalls still secure, or do you now have weak points in your security infrastructure to allow access to remote working staff?
• Do staff understand the importance of keeping devices locked and understand the risk of misplacing or losing a device? Make sure you have a clear procedure in place for reporting any issues.
• Can your team spot an email which doesn’t look quite right? Make sure they know the consequences of clicking on links which are not genuine and put a clear reporting process in place.
• If staff are using Virtual Private Networks (VPN’s) to access business data, ensure these are secure, and using encryption technologies on the transmitted data.

A cyberattack can be extremely damaging to your business.  Ransomware for example, which we can all remember from the NHS Ransomware attack in 2017, can severely interrupt business operations. All of your data could be wiped out by such an attack and recovery could be a slow process depending on what backup solutions you have in place.

Having solid, reliable backups and disaster recovery plans is paramount to running a successful business. We utilise the best in class backup and recovery solutions, and work with our clients to ensure they work for their specific needs, no matter the type or size of business they own.

Damage to business reputation is one of the hardest things for any business to recover from, particularly if you have put your own customers data at risk, which also comes with the potential of a significant fine from the Information Commissioners Office (ICO).

Cybercrime is becoming ever more sophisticated, so the systems used to protect your business from cybercrime need to be sophisticated too. The weakest link in every security system unfortunately is the staff members themselves.

Training your staff about what to look for, particularly when accessing email or internet resources, should form a key part of your business training practices.  David Allen IT Solutions can help with this and have cybercrime training solutions ready to deliver online to your staff.

We can assess your current working from home set-ups and ensure that we put secure systems in place to protect your business and its data, and then help to train your staff to make sure they don’t become the weakest link when it comes to cyber security.

If you would like to find out more about how David Allen IT Solutions can secure your business from cyber threats, contact us here.