Phishing, Cybersecurity and Your Small Business
Phishing can have a significant and often devastating impact on small businesses. Unlike larger organizations, small businesses typically have fewer resources to dedicate to cybersecurity, making them an attractive target for cybercriminals.
Small businesses can be impacted by phishing and other types of attacks in ways that might not have been considered before. Here are some of the more common ways that phishing attacks can impact the business:
Financial Loss
Phishing attacks often result in direct financial losses due to funds being stolen, fraudulent payments being made, and ransoms being paid. Cybercriminals often use phishing emails to trick employees into transferring money to fraudulent bank accounts, and attackers may impersonate legitimate vendors or clients to request fake payments. Worse, phishing emails can be used to deliver ransomware, locking up or encrypting critical systems or data until a ransom is paid.
For small businesses, even a single financial loss can be catastrophic.
Data Breaches
Phishing can lead to the compromise of sensitive business information or customer data, such as customer personal information or payment details, employee credentials or other private information of the employee, or business trade secrets and other proprietary business data. Data breaches can easily result in legal liabilities, fines, and damage to the business reputation.
Reputational Damage
When a phishing attack exposes sensitive customer information or disrupts services, it erodes customer trust. This can lead to clients taking their business elsewhere and makes attracting new customers harder. It could also impact vendor relationships, causing partners to view the business as a weak link in the supply chain.
Operational Disruption
Cyber-attacks, including phishing attacks, can disrupt business operations and cause numerous problems. Ransomware or malware delivered through phishing emails can render IT systems unusable, causing loss of productivity. If employees lose access to critical tools, files, or data, there will be delays in work and projects. Businesses also must divert time and resources to recover from attacks, taking away from regular business operations and revenue-generating activities.
Why Small Businesses Are Often Targeted
Small businesses are rich targets for cyber-attacks, especially phishing, because they often have weaker defenses compared to larger enterprises. Often made up of a few trusted employees, small businesses are attacked in ways that exploit trust and personal familiarity. Due to many small businesses having weaker cyber-defenses, attackers can find high payoffs in financial rewards or valuable data with a single successful phishing attack.
Noobeh Helps Businesses Protect Themselves
Every business should teach their employees how to recognize and report phishing emails, and MFA (multi-factor authentication) should protect all accounts, but human beings can only do so much, so it makes sense to implement tools that can put additional intelligence behind your services and defend your systems to help keep the problem from ever getting to your users.
Our team at Noobeh recommends and provisions Microsoft Defender for Office 365 to block phishing emails and messages with malicious links and content. Advanced email security helps reduce inbox spam and blocks messages from spoofed senders, which helps prevent users from interacting with bad emails and potentially exposing protected information.
Email protection is only part of the needed coverage. Noobeh also recommends having strong endpoint protection solutions to detect and prevent phishing-related malware and other attacks. Microsoft Defender for Endpoints does this, working seamlessly with our remote monitoring and management and your other Microsoft services to provide a higher level of protection for the business.
By understanding the risks and taking proactive measures, small businesses can minimize the impact of phishing attacks and protect their operations, reputation, and customers.
