Information Security for Start Ups

 Modern start-up businesses are totally reliant on digital technology to help them start and grow. Today’s start-up businesses have been moulded by the leaps in consumer technology that have occurred over the past few years: hence, they prefer to be mobile, using technology such as laptops, smartphones and tablets.

Adopting new technology to operate a business brings with it the need for awareness of new risks and threats. Given that start-ups are mostly dependent on mobile technology, they all face a range of security threats in the form of viruses, hacking and finance and information theft: click here for more information. If you’re running a start-up business, there are several security measures you’re going to have to take in order to ensure your business’s survival.

Reliance on email and internet

The popularity of wireless internet, instant messaging and other mobile internet applications has increased the risk of computer viruses greatly. Every new technology is more or less an entry point for malicious users into your business’s system. Your start-up business is most likely going to be fully reliant on email and the internet, which means you are at risk from over 87,000 individual viruses that are out there.

Apart from being prepared to fend off virus attacks, your business will need to be protected against hackers. In 2012, 47 per cent of malicious security breaches were attributed to hackers. An estimated 30,000 websites are compromised every day. Clearly, relying on the internet is unavoidable, but it will leave your company vulnerable in numerous ways.

Information security: measures that must be taken

The 2013 Information Security Breaches Survey, conducted by the UK government and PwC, states that a small business, on average, can lose from £35,000 to £65,000 in its worst security breach in a year. In order to protect yourself against crippling losses, there are several steps that your company should take from the outset:

• Educating staff: All staff members should undergo security training before they start their jobs, ideally. In 2013, 36 per cent of the worst security breaches were caused by inadvertent human error, while 57 per cent of small businesses suffered from staff-related security breaches in the last year. A knowledgeable workforce will minimise malicious threats to security.
• Using a protected CRM: The Enterprise Nation Quarterly Small Business Survey, conducted for American businesses, showed that 83 per cent of respondents (start-ups and small businesses) claimed that they didn’t have a proper Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system in place. Without a protected CRM system, more reliance is placed on emails, which are open to attack.
• Conducting a security audit: If you’ve already launched your company and you’ve failed to take preliminary security measures, conducting a security audit would be your best bet for setting up defences against cyber criminals.

In the information age, security is essential to survival: it really is as simple as that. If you haven’t set up your defences, it’s inevitable that your business will suffer painful security breaches at some point in the near future. Make sure that you’re covered as soon as possible.