Insurance Insights

Many small businesses across the country store lots of extremely sensitive and important information on their computer systems, but new data suggests they may not take the basic steps necessary to ensure that they have simple safeguards in place if something goes disastrously wrong with those machines.

The ways in which independent companies are doing business has changed significantly in the last few years, and many more such moves are likely to come in the near future. That includes greater integration of big data by small businesses across the country.

The holiday season is a time of stress for a lot of small business owners simply because there never seems to be a moment to take a breath. There are many details pulling entrepreneurs’ attentions in different directions, and that may leave them vulnerable to having themselves or their customers ripped off by opportunistic individuals.

In the last few years, a lot of attention has been paid by lawmakers at both the state and federal levels to the ways in which companies – both large and small – that suffer data breaches deal with the fallout from them. Currently, almost every state has a law on the books that dictates how this must be done, but hope for a federal bill to overarch them all seems to be fading.

The unfortunate fact for businesses of every size is that the likelihood they’ll have to deal with a data breach at some point in the future is growing all the time. In addition, because there are so many different ways in which such an event can take place, planning for any single type of incident is not going to be enough to guarantee safety. As such, companies may want to ensure that they’re prepared to handle a wide variety of data breach types if and when they occur.

These days, many consumers are vulnerable to various kinds of scams or other attacks that could end up putting them in dire straits with regard to their credit, finances, and even personally identifying information. However, while many Americans are now on alert for those kinds of threats, many small business owners might not know that their companies are often in the same position.

Companies large and small have to think about the ways in which they may be vulnerable to hacking attacks and other common types of data breaches, but the fact of the matter is that many independent enterprises simply don’t do a good enough job of protecting themselves.

Many small business owners across the country may not know it, but these days, companies of their size are being increasingly targeted for hacking attacks of many kinds. As such, they’re likely going to have to do more to increase the security of their computer systems so that criminals cannot gain access to their sensitive data.

While it can be easy for companies to say they have a comprehensive plan for how to deal with potential security breaches, the fact of the matter is that they are likely to still be vulnerable in a number of ways. One of the biggest is as a result of malware that can be loaded onto a company computer – or even an employee’s personal device – which can then worm its way into the entire system.

For workers at businesses of any size, the line between office hours and time spent at home is blurring all the time, thanks to mobile technology which allows them to keep tabs on work projects from just about anywhere. However, that can pose a unique problem for smaller companies in particular when it comes to protecting their most sensitive data.