Cyber criminals targeting more small businesses

Cyber criminals targeting more small businesses


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SALT LAKE CITY — Small businesses are being targeted by cyber criminals more frequently, and experts say business owners aren't doing enough to keep it from happening to them.

Cyber attacks on businesses with fewer than 250 employees made up 31 percent of all attacks in 2012, according to CNN. That's an 18 percent increase from 2011.

However, many owners aren't even taking basic steps to protect themselves. Equinox IT Services CTO Steve Telford said some people don't think their business is a big enough organization to be perceived as a target.

"If you don't want to buy something, at least for personal protection, there are a ton of free options out there," Telford said. "For small businesses, it is not that expensive to get at least basic protection."

One mistake people make is opening attachments from emails sent to them from people they don't know. Telford says protection from free email services might not be enough.

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"It's not something malicious because you've already invited it in," Telford said. "You requested the information from the web."

But hackers from outside the company might not be the biggest threat to these small business owners. Norm Chambers, Equinox IT Services COO, said people should be more concerned about keeping their malware and anti-virus software up to date.

"Sometimes they fail on their back-ups and they fail on their virus, malware and spam protection," Chambers said.

Chambers also said many companies allow employees to save sensitive data on personal laptops instead of having them save it to a secure location. On top of that, they don't set up proper password policies.

In some cases, people may download what they think is adequate protection against viruses, but they don't download the patches that are needed to keep the software up to date.

"Sometimes, you'll buy an anti-virus (program) and 13 months later it expired," Chambers said. "It's still running in your system tree but it's letting you down because it doesn't have a renewed subscription."

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Paul Nelson

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