Small Businesses Attacked by Cyber Criminals

Cyber criminals have found new targets for their attacks. These targets are small businesses' bank accounts. Small businesses are an easy target for cyber attack because they and their banks, which are often very small, have few financial and technical resources to stop such attacks. Also, these companies do not have legal protection from identity fraud, unlike individual consumers, and hence are forced to absorb the losses caused due to cyber robbery.

In a recent incident, Sign Designs Inc’s bank account in the Bank of Stockton was hacked. Sign Designs lost close to $48,000 when as much as $100,000 from its account was mysteriously transferred to 17 other unidentified accounts. These unidentified accounts were just added a day before this incident took place. Although Bank of Stockton had immediately notified all the banks that received the funds to stop all transactions from this account, $48,000 had already been laundered.

Now, the blame game between the Bank of Stockton and Sign Designs has started on who should pay for the damages or the lost money. Sign Designs say that the Bank did not flag the unusual account activity. On the other hand, the bank says that the attack was generated from the company’s own systems, where the criminals got to know the account credentials. Such small businesses run into losses of millions of dollars because of such attacks.

Cyber criminals send either spear phishing email containing an infected file or link to a malicious website to the company. Once the email is opened on the company’s computer, from which financial accounts are accessed, this sends all of the account details to the hackers. It is a very simple way of accessing all the company’s accounts.

Companies should hence take basic precautions to prevent themselves from such attacks. Computers used to access bank accounts should be isolated from the company’s internal network and should not be used to open other applications and mail. Another option is to use an obscure OS Ubuntu or simply a less common web browser like Opera, as hackers do not design malware for them. If Internet Explorer is used, the latest version, IE 8, should be installed which includes features that prevent such attacks. Other basic internet browser security settings should be turned on.

Another aspect of security is associating with a bank which offers full security for its accounts. The company can also go in for insurance against such fraud. There are various ways in which companies can protect themselves against such attacks and they should seek professional help. This is because today cyber security is an ongoing concern for all the businesses using the internet.