It is very scary to know that one out of three small scale business isn’t aware of the ways to keep their online business safe and secured. The most common type of malware that is affecting individuals as well as the businesses is the Ransomware. The director of malware intelligence has said that the number of attacks by Ransomware has increased by 231% in the first quarter of 2016 to 2017. Whenever an online business has been attacked by this malware, they won’t just lose their online data but also face financial loss, affecting its reputation in the market.
Ransomware is nothing but a kind of malware which might be used to highjack either your website or a computer.
In a study from the year 2016, The Hosting Institute showed that a lot of online businesses were affected by it and the losses were of around $209 million and it might increase to $6 trillion by the year 2021. This might even damage the online company’s reputation. For every small business it is important to gain the trust of their customers. Only if they are able to get it from potential customers you will be able to convert them so as to generate leads.
Protection against hackers
The best way with which the small businesses can now be away from Ransomware is by taking necessary measures in order to protect your website or computer systems.
The following are the five best ways with which you can now keep your business safe and secured:
Choose secured hosting service
Make sure to choose a web hosting service provider which is PCI compliant for your online business or website. Though this all your website payments and the checkout processes have made safe and secured. So, your hackers might not be able to find any loopholes to exploit your business. If the web hosting provider provides the necessary security, then it becomes difficult for the hackers to enter your website and take away or block all necessary information.
Opt for HTTPS
With the help of Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) which provides an extra security layer for your website and the web server. It’s a secured communication protocol to keep your site safe for you and users too. HTTPS provides an extra layer of security to the website and without it, your rank on the search engine will also get affected.
Best practices for all your employees’ emails
Most of the online businesses do prefer to communicate through emails nowadays. But it is the most common method with the help of which any hacker can infect your computers and various systems. The process through which your systems are attacked is known as phishing spam.
In this process, the cyber criminals do use emails in order to send malicious attachments. When you click on these links which have been sent through your email, the virus would enter your computer system. It is important to train your employees with certain best email practices that would help you to prevent such situations. The following are the various steps to be considered:
- Employees should use their business email id for subscribing to other services
- Don’t open unexpected mails and their links.
- Scan the attachments before you open them.
Keep your software update
In order to prevent any hacker from penetrating into your software make sure to keep it up to date from time to time. You can even choose to set automatic update when the updates have been released. This will help you in preventing hackers to exploit your websites or the computer systems.
Protecting your computer networks
It is important for all the business to see that they go for comprehensive business security solutions which are available in the market that will keep their systems safe and secured. Get the best website penetration test and malware cleanups along with the antivirus products.
Conclusion
If at any time, your online business has become a victim of hacking, there are high chances that you might lose all your heard earned trust also. In turn this can cause a negative impact over the ranking on search engine and the relationship between you and your suppliers or investors. By following the five above-mentioned steps, you can keep your online business secured.
Aisha Gujral 
UPLARN 
