SME Q3 2018

4 SME NEWS / Q3 2018 NEWS , Small doesn’t mean safe - 5 Steps to Cyber Security for SMEs Joe Collinwood, CEO at Cysure, explains how getting organised with an information securitymanagement system (ISMS) goes a long way to preventing data loss and fines. With new threats ap- pearing daily cyber security is becoming increasingly impor- tant and complex, yet many small business owners don’t have the bandwidth to take the trend seriously. Most news stories have focused on security breaches in large organisations, however, small businesses are especially vulnerable to securi- ty threats as they often lack the resources and expertise to imple- ment operational and risk man- agement policies. Cyber criminals are preying on this lack of exper- tise and target small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) as they are easy victims and can be used as a backdoor to larger compa- nies. The Cyber security breaches survey 2017(i) conducted by Ipsos Mori on behalf of the UK Government, revealed that 52% of small businesses identified a cyber breach or attack in the past 12 months. The most common types of breaches identified were related to staff receiving fraud- ulent emails (72%), followed by viruses, spyware and malware (33%), people impersonating the organisation in emails or online (27%) and ransomware (17%). For small companies with limited budgets, cyber security can be a tricky job, however, getting “your ducks in a row” with an informa- tion security management system is a good place to start. Here are 5 Steps to Cyber Se- curity for SMEs. 1.Leadership is vital – cyber se- curity starts at the top of the or- ganisation, if management leads by example taking an active approach to the mitigation of cy- ber risk, this attitude will prevail throughout the organisation. Un- derstandably, leaders in SMEs are focused on building their busi- ness and not inwardly looking at complex organisational policies. However, adopting a systematic approach to processes and pro-