It is one of the worst moments for the company IT to find that their system has been attacked by a virus, it’s even worse when that virus is Cryptolocker. The famed ransomware virus manages to insert itself into any system but businesses are the hardest hit, especially those without hourly back-ups. Recently it was…

It is one of the worst moments for the company IT to find that their system has been attacked by a virus, it’s even worse when that virus is Cryptolocker. The famed ransomware virus manages to insert itself into any system but businesses are the hardest hit, especially those without hourly back-ups. Recently it was the fake Australian post emails that made it past the spam filter, to be clicked by users. It has been sorts of fake emails, banks receipts, lotto winnings and now remittance emails.

Each email contains a link to the self-installing virus, with one click and without proper security on your system the virus will embed itself in your files. For individuals at home it’s not the biggest disaster to lose some photos or programs, just reinstall and get back to it. However with a business, it’s much harder than that, you might have financial information or any other important files, this might not do much damage to a large business that has hourly backups, and you can just restore and off you go. Well, it’s the small to medium business who end up taking the short end of the stick.

There is a couple of options for small business depending on how seriously they took their IT security. On the off chance that they have been doing backups it would have probably been daily or weekly, with that in mind recovery is possible and even can be dealt with. With no backups, the only thing left is paying the ransom. An unfortunate situation for anyone to be in, but a strong lesson to make sure backups are done and the IT security is tight.

So here is the thing, the reason much small business get a cough out is that they obviously don’t hire big shot IT companies to secure their systems. That’s where cloud solutions come into their own, companies like Amazon spend millions each year to make sure their servers are hack-proof, from digital to physical security. Imagine a bank getting the Cryptolocker, and locking out personal files of clients, that’s why many banks are actually using services like Amazon.

So if you trust your bank which in the cloud then you should trust accounting systems like MYOB Advanced which is hosted on the amazon servers. That’s all fair and good, but why should you change accounting systems just for added security. That’s the thing you don’t have to, purchasing small NAS server just for backups could do the trick for a small company even storing stuff on Dropbox will help. Just in case a computer on the network is infected, the reason I mention MYOB Advanced is that one of its features is file management and the ability to host files under each account.

So here are the Top 6 tips to secure your small business

1. Use passwords with capital letters and numbers.
2. Back up your most important data to a NAS box on the network that is not accessible to everyone. (Most NAS boxes have the option to schedule data backups)
3. Use a cloud service for storage or accounting. It could save you time and money.
4. Educate your employees on how to be vigilant with emails, never open if you are unsure.
5. Hire a competent IT person even just for a day or two to consult and suggest improvements
6. Have a fully paid operational anti-spyware/virus software, free ones are usually limited in their features.