Cyber Security Essentials for Small Businesses: 5 Proactive Steps Every Small Business Can Take to Protect Against Cyber Threats

Cyber crime has surpassed the international drug trade top criminal moneymaker with damages expected to exceed $10 Trillion by 2025. These attacks are not being executed by the stereotypical hacker. This is 21st century organized crime. As a society, cyber-attacks are a problem we can no longer afford to ignore.It is not an overstatement to say everyone is a target. Every business, organization and individual is at risk, yet most do not even take the most basic cybersecurity steps to protect themselves, even though there are straightforward and low-cost measures that can be taken.Even with the advancement of technology, cyber-criminals are still overwhelmingly using the tried-and-true methods of weak password exploitation, phishing and confidence scams, trusted access through compromised vendors, openly accessible network ports to the Internet, and un-patched vulnerabilities to make light work of the business of cyber-crime. Because cyber-criminals are having so much success with these basic methods, they generally stick to what they know works.This book outlines the five actionable steps every small business owner can take to significantly reduce the risk of becoming the next casualty of cyber crime. While this book focuses on helping small businesses, most of these topics also apply to individual computer users.