These days, many small business owners are feeling a little bit of uncertainty about the state of the economy and their prospects for making their companies grow, but at the same time, many may still not have taken the steps needed to protect themselves from data breaches, including buying small business insurance policies.
Small businesses may be at particular risk for suffering data breaches, which can be extremely problematic for these companies, as well as their clients and customers, according to a report from USA Today. This is typically because many of these smaller companies do not have the resources available to properly protect themselves, such as by hiring a dedicated IT professional whose sole job is to improve security measures and help safeguard sensitive information from breaches, where they are accidental or intentional.
For this reason, companies need to do more in other areas to protect themselves, and fortunately there are a number of relatively easy, cost-effective steps that they can take to do so, the report said. Perhaps the easiest of these is to properly train staff about how to protect the sensitive data that hackers may be after, or which can be exposed through human error. Once workers know what can most often lead to this type of incident, they can necessarily do more to make sure those problems are avoided going forward.
Further, small businesses should also take the time to invest proper safeguards for their systems themselves, the report said. While trying to guard against human error is certainly an important step, it doesn’t cover everything. Therefore, installing spyware and virus protection software on office computer networks is of the utmost importance, and so to is it vital to keep a close eye on WiFi access and mobile devices carrying company data. For instance, any worker connecting a laptop or mobile phone to a public hotspot might be putting it at risk for a breach because others, with nefarious intent, could also be sitting on those connections and looking to steal important information.
Data breaches can cost as much as millions of dollars to remediate in many instances and such a high price tag can sink many small businesses. As such, it can be extremely important for these companies to take on tech insurance policies that help to cover these costs.
