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It can be argued that startups are the future of business.

These smaller companies have perfected the idea of identifying a unique concern and working hard to solve it. Unlike the more prominent companies, most startups excel in not wanting to do it all at once. They would instead take one concept and work around it, making life easier for people on that front.

With the growth of the technology industry, we have also seen the emergence of many startups. More of these businesses are also coming up in other sectors.

If the cybersecurity concerns that they face are not adequately addressed, we might see them going out of business faster than they came in.

 

Why Startups Should Stay Alert

When hackers strike, they are going for the biggest payday that they can manage. This is why it is not uncommon to see them go after the more significant companies most of the time.

However, this is where it is easy to get things wrong.

When Yahoo lost the details of over 3 billion accounts to hackers, it made the news. The same was true for Uber, caught in the middle of a messy business where about 57 million details of riders and drivers were exposed.

It can be argued that we only heard about those because of the sheer size of those companies.

However, every day, there is a small company experiencing a breach that we do not hear about. The data supports this, too, showing that 43% of all cyber-attacks are targeting small businesses.

That number is not as gloomy as knowing that 83% of small business and startup owners do not even have the funds to deal with the after-effects of a cyberattack. It is, thus, little surprise that 60% of small businesses will go out of business within six months of suffering a cyber-attack.

If nothing is done, we might lose more of these small businesses than we can get back.

 

Staying Safe

All small business and startup owners should know that staying safe is not just the role of the IT staff. Everyone on the payroll should understand what they have to do to ensure they are not the weak link to make the breach happen.

Poor password habits are usually to blame in most cases. Passwords should not be shared indiscriminately, and they should be as reliable and secure as possible. Do not forget to enable additional measures like two-factor authentication.

Businesses should also consider downloading a VPN, antivirus, antimalware, and other security-oriented software for increased protection.

The former provides quality encryption against network snooping and data hijacking. The later will step up security against malicious files that would have been downloaded over the internet. Antimalware will also keep internal networks safe from infected external drives.

Finally, everyone should know about phishing attacks. Since they account for 90% of all data breaches, they are not to be taken with levity.