Cyber Security Threats that Small Businesses Should Address

The environments in which people work and collaborate are continually evolving. For many, work is no longer tied to one, physical location. For them, it’s about being productive wherever they are — whether that’s on the road, in a home office, at a jobsite or even in a coffee shop.

With so much information being shared through myriad devices and across various networks outside of traditional office firewalls, your business’ data becomes increasingly vulnerable. This is especially true when even the most well-intentioned employees deliberately go around security protocols in an effort to remain productive and complete a task.

According to surveys conducted by Dell Technologies of workers from a wide variety of companies:

• 72% of employees are willing to share confidential data externally.
• 50% of employees use personal cloud apps and email to share confidential data.
• 41% of employees will work around security safeguards to get work done.

Businesses of all sizes continually face threats to their digital assets, corporate data and customer information. These data threats and attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, frequent and widespread. Some examples of these threats include:

• Physical theft and loss — an attack due to human error or the malicious intent of a hardware thief.
• Denial-of-service — a cyber attack in which a legitimate user cannot access information systems, devices or other network resources.
• Phishing — a fraudulent attempt by a cyber criminal to obtain sensitive information.
• Pharming — an attack that redirects unaware users to a phony website.
• Ransomware — a form of malicious software that threatens to block access to a victim’s system or data until they pay a ransom.
• Malware — software that is purposely created to harm a computer, network or server.

Staying ahead of these threats is critically important, especially for small businesses. That’s why Dell Technologies is a participating company of the NAHB member savings program, offering NAHB members significant savings on a broad selection of security solutions to protect your data and keep your business moving forward.

For more information, visit dell.com/nahb. And to learn more about the many other opportunities for members to save on automobiles, building products and business services, go to nahb.org/savings.