Insurance Insights

These days, many small business owners are fully aware of the threats they face from online issues, including hacking, but they might not know what they can do about it. As a consequence, it seems that a large number are still simply not doing anything to protect themselves.

A new study reports websites are causing more malware infections than email. In the past, it was believed that email hacking and malware, also known as phishing, were the biggest threat to you or your business. Now a new report conducted by Osterman Research and provided by Trustwave shows surfing the web is more of a risk.

A recent study shows a startling high number of workers use unsecure wireless Internet sources during their daily commute.

Over the last few years, data breaches have begun to grab headlines not only across the U.S. but around the world, and they’re affecting major companies, government agencies, and more. This kind of thing may actually be a particular threat to small businesses, though, because while it may take very complicated hacking attacks to get into large organizations’ data, there are few such barriers for independent companies that can’t heavily invest in security infrastructure.

Data breaches for big-time companies like eBay, Target, and more have grabbed headlines in recent months and prompted experts to warn small businesses about the threats they face from similar situations. But for many independent owners, the ways in which these giant brand names – which have huge security budgets – were hit might seem largely irrelevant. However, there’s still a lot that can be gleaned from the unfortunate events which would be applicable to small businesses.

Data breaches are happening more and more often all the time, and they may put small businesses in particular at a more significant risk simply because these companies don’t have the security infrastructure to deal with such threats. This may be a particular problem when it comes to protecting the payment information for customers or clients, but there are things they can do to increase the safety of such information.

These days, many small business owners might like to advertise their companies in a number of different avenues, and one that many might turn to even now. However, with this willingness to pay for advertising in that way comes the potential to be ripped off by criminals looking to make a quick buck from independent firms that might be unaware of their designs.

With the threats from data breaches and hacking attacks grabbing so many headlines around the world these days, it should come as no surprise that many small business owners might be thinking a little more pointedly about the ways in which they might be vulnerable. However, coming up with plans to more significantly protect a company from such incidents, and then putting those ideas into practice, isn’t always as easy as many entrepreneurs might like.

Digital transactions are becoming more commonplace in businesses today. Digital signatures are supposed to validate the authenticity of documents and  also the fact that these documents remain unaltered.

The word “password” is finally dethroned as the world’s worst password. At least, according to SplashData’s annual “Worst Passwords” list. The list includes the 25 most common passwords used on the Internet. This year represents the first time since the list began that the word “Password” wasn’t the undisputed leader. Falling to second place, “password” was finally replaced by the two-time runner-up of “123456”.