Hacking is never far from the news these days. Indeed, if all the stories emerging from News International are true then it could be argued that hacking and the news have been one and the same for a long time in certain quarters.
While the current predicament of various red top journalists has made for some lively newspaper copy, hacking and cyber security are issues which every SME needs to take into account. High profile cases of data theft can do serious damage to both a company’s reputation and the trust which their partners and customers have in them. For example, Sony is going to have work very hard to regain the confidence of the 77 million Playstation users whose details were hacked last year.
Professional or amateur hackers are not the only threat to business security. From the employee who loses a laptop with sensitive data to simple misaddressed emails, technology means that there are a million new ways for valuable data to end up in the wrong hands.
The latest edition of CA Magazine has an informative article by Guy Clapperton which examines the issue of data security for SMEs. You can find it on page 46 of the downloadable PDF version of the magazine. Reading it won’t solve every security issue but it will give you a good idea of what you need to think about if you haven’t already.
On a connected note, the Business 7 site has a rather menacing article profiling the seven different levels of cyber security hacking.