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How to protect your business from cybercrime

Is your business safe? It may not be. Many unscrupulous people are operating online looking for new ways to exploit honest people.

I was recently drawn into a scam promulgated by an as-yet-unidentified through a freelancing website. Because of how personally this affected me and my brand reputation, I decided to write today’s blog post on how to protect your online business.

My personal experience involved Upwork.com, which is a website that boasts about the value of freelance talent.

Well, as the old saying goes: there is nothing more expensive than cheap labor.

Someone posing as me pretending to be a writer/editor from New York took a job writing a book for a client and the results were bad. 3 chapters completely plagiarized wrong.

Worse yet: I was blamed for the fraudulent job! This person’s profile had my name and photo on it and her client found me (the real me) through a Google search that matched my profile photo. You can imagine the shock I felt being falsely accused of scamming someone!

After realizing this was a clear case of identity theft, I immediately contacted UpWork to have the fake profile removed. This person’s client did the same; we hope they were able to get a full refund of the money spent on the useless book written for them.

Scary stuff. But compared to what others have found, they are small potatoes.

While hiring and supporting local talent has always been my thing, if you have to outsource (overseas or through those freelance sites) then a great idea to protect yourself is to insist on seeing a scan of your government-issued ID. Take your ID proof a step further and insist on a video conference before committing.

Fraud is on the rise

2016 saw a significant increase in fraud over 2015. While the numbers show the amount stolen slightly decreased, the volume of theft increased. A lot.

While those numbers relate more to consumer fraud if you’re the seller, you could lose out-of-pocket money if the claim means returning the now-used product to you.

The take-home point is that fraud has increased, so you need to take steps to prevent yourself and your customers from becoming a victim.

How to prevent and report cybercrime

According to the National Cyber ​​Security Alliance, there are several steps you should take to protect your business and customers:

• Assess risks

Identify what types of fraud or crime you may be more susceptible to. Do you work with medical information? Financial information?

Even if the purpose of your business is simply B2C, there are steps you must take to protect yourself.

Users who shop through your website trust you to keep their financial information safe, so take steps to do so, such as having SSL installed for any e-commerce or sensitive information and it’s wise not to store it.

• Monitor threats

This can be as simple as making sure spam messages are not opened or emails with attachments are scanned with some form of antivirus software. While the software is not 100% effective, it will stop the best distributed scams.

• Report attacks

If you are the victim of a cyberattack you are going to be frustrated and with good reason.

Currently, Canada is really vulnerable when it comes to cybercrime and your best hope is to call the police. While promises have been made to address this, very little has been done and international criminals cannot be prosecuted.

If you are the victim of a cybercrime, please contact your local police and cross your fingers. But the bad news is that you probably won’t get a resolution. This is something to consider if you have been recruiting from abroad.

In the US, reporting cybercrime is much easier. You contact the FBI through this website. They have the ability to tackle international criminals, and the United States has recently cracked down on international crime operating within its borders.

For those reading from any other country, I encourage you to do your own due diligence regarding the protocol for reporting cybercrime so that you are prepared should you need to be.

• Execute a Safety Plan

For this, the recommendation is to work with your ISP on a cyber security plan. While it may be worth talking to your ISP, you should first talk to your website’s hosting company.

The security of your customer and business information is sensitive, so make sure your host knows that you have things like routine backups of all information made and stored on another server.

Most specializations keep on top of everything, but it’s always worth calling them for a quick review, especially if you have information relevant to them that might be helpful.

If you have already been a victim, let your host know what happened. The information may help others in the future.

• Protect your customers

The suggestion in this article to scan all USB drives routinely is a good one. Sometimes information can be locked behind the most advanced firewall, but it still gets out.

One of the easiest ways to exploit technology is social engineering. Many times the information is not so much stolen as leaked by someone internally.

Have a privacy policy and make sure your employees know that every time they connect something to your computer network, it will be scanned.

Make sure that all software is up to date and that all computers connected to your network are running the most up-to-date version of your operating system.

• Educate your team

This is an easy one.

Have a protocol in place that ensures your employees follow all of the steps listed above.

All computers should be scanned when connected to a network and all USB drives as well.

Most people are used to this by now, so don’t worry about implementing it all of a sudden.

Stay safe

By taking steps to protect yourself, you stay ahead of the game in case something happens. Fighting back after being a victim only helps the people who have robbed you by giving them time to disappear.

Online business is likely to grow even more, and along with it, fraud. The complexity of scams will evolve, and hopefully so will the solutions. In the meantime, I hope you’ve enjoyed these tips and hope you never fall victim to cybercrime.

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