How small business can fight hackers

Small businesses are facing more hack attacks than ever before. They are brutal and can take your business down. But the question is what can you do about them? Gartner research firm estimates that about 15 percent of all small businesses suffered a hack attack in 2008, and most were not well-equipped to avoid them.

There are a few rules things companies can do to keep systems safe. For starters, Adam Hils, principal analyst for network security at Gartner, says hackers have "figured out that small and midsize businesses are easier to get into, and users are more likely to download bad things."

The nature of the most common attacks has also changed. These days they mostly involve employees surfing the web or responding to emails that sound legitimate but are really bogus schemes fishing for information. The "drive-by" takes advantage of the innocent computer user who stumbles across a site run by hackers.

This is old news for most IT executives yet anyone in a management position must be increasing the training for their IT staffs and even imposing punishment on those who don't comply. For instance, should you dock a worker a day's pay for failing to comply with an iron-clad rule that is supposed to be followed by everyone to keep the security hatches locked down?

Should a worker be given three warnings and then dismissed if he or she fails to follow security protocol? Should your entire IT staff be told when someone is punished for making a security blunder?

With more employees working remotely, there are more points of entry to your network. Vulnerabilities can be created by laptops, PDAs, removable drives, and even smartphones, according to an article in Business Week.

You know the drill. Banish passwords that are easy to guess. Change them every three months. Teach your workers to be cautious, not careless. Make sure you have anti-virus and anti-malware software on your systems. Forget about that old-fashioned firewall. Do some research and come along with the latest trends. Use multifunctional firewalls, for example.

Don't let your security lapse. After a year were you have faced plenty of challenges from the economic meltdown, the last thing you need right now is an insecure system to start a new year.

For more on security precautions:
- see this Business Week article

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