How Safe Is Your Family Business
The rise of organized crimes targeting the cyber treasure house of information has been sending alarms to businesses worldwide. Data thefts, data hijacking with the huge demands of ransom in return for sensitive data, stealing of financial data such as bank account numbers, credit cards, security codes and other cybercrimes are increasingly becoming a common day challenge every business has to deal with.
It is very much unlikely that hackers will show any mercy to Australian family businesses which are still remaining in the dark about these cyber-attacks. This is a shocking fact, even after some daring cyber-attacks, including an attack for stealing about $600 million dollars from private bank accounts that was witnessed last year.
Backed by organized crime gangs, cyber security attacks are getting increasing in numbers and reach. Mike Burgess, the chief information and security officer of Telstra says that it is all about pace, scale and reach for these attacks.
The impact of cyber-attacks is growing to unexpected scales even though there is little innovation involved. About 99% of the total attacks are known attacks which could have been easily prevented if only the business operators took time to read a security manual.
The real problem that Australian family businesses face is not the lurking threat posed by hackers. It is the Australian family businesses’ own impervious attitude towards these attacks that pose a serious problem. According to the global report by the business advisory firm EY and Kennesaw State University’s Cox Family Enterprise centre that studied about 21 global markets, a surprisingly large number of Australian businesses are not bothered about the cyber-attacks when compared to their counterparts located in other places.
Even the Australian business owners who were aware of the security risks seem to place a low importance to these attacks as they responded with about 32 % of them rating the impact of these attacks to be low.
Most of the businesses share sensitive information via emails and their employees are unaware of the viruses and malware they pick up from a seemingly normal internet usage. You can follow the tips to save your business from sinking due to security lacks and other issues.
The worst situation is that most family businesses are faced with the obstacles of internal conflicts because they can’t separate business lives from their personal ones. The conflict could be for various reasons, such as difference of opinion, varied interest, rivalry, property issue, power of attorney problem, etc. so, it is important to find out the issue and work on resolving your conflicts to minimise security threats.
However, the worrying state of security has occurred despite the allocations made to security by the Australian firms. The reason why these allocations do not work is probably because they are not done properly. Most of the businesses seem to be investing more on what brings them profit and pay less attention to what could prevent their losses. With the cost of global cybercrime soaring to billions, the lack of concern for security investment is an unhealthy sign for businesses.
You can discover expert business, financial and management advice to avoid problems and other potential issues.
Hence the government itself has stepped up to provide a new national cyber security policy that will enable the private sectors to work alongside the governments to improve information security.
As the world is getting connected in an increasingly digitized manner, companies must start paying attention on their security holes. Though Australian family businesses are relatively easy going on cyber security and are too slow in recognizing the threat, they stand at an advantage. Once they are convinced of the bad effects of the security breaches they can easily implement the necessary decisions that will safeguard their business.
As The Security leader of EY Asia Pacific puts it, the major concerns for security are the top level focus and right procedures that can anticipate new threats. Security has to become a major policy of the organization to make it bulletproof against the attacks.
Conclusion
It is important to focus on supporting your family business and boost the security by keeping the system and everything updated. Having proper communication can also help you achieve targeted goals without any threat or theft.
