Now imagine having your entire identity stolen. Your social security number, business ID number, access to your personal and business bank accounts, and retirement accounts – swiped out from under you. Your personal and business cards can be maxed out too. You could lose your client database, financial records, and all of the work files your company has ever produced or compiled. That’s identity theft.

Consider what would happen if you had to invest an enormous amount of time, money, effort, and energy to restore your credit and good reputation. Think about how much your business would suffer if your payroll money or the money you use to pay vendors was stolen out from under you one day.

Or what if an online criminal stole your identity and used it to pull off other criminal acts? Could your business survive a front-page news story about how you or your company ripped off hundreds of people? Though you might be “innocent until proven guilty” in the justice system, you are “guilty until proven innocent” in the media.

Could You Financially Survive If Your Business And Personal Identity Were Stolen?

Many small business owners tend to ignore or don’t know about taking steps to secure their personal and company information on their network from online hijacks. By then, it’s too late, and the damage is done. While it may be challenging to determine the actual financial impact identity theft would have on your business, you can’t deny the fact that it would have a negative effect. Cash most definitely IS king. And if yours is stolen and used by a cybercriminal, the emotional toll such an event would take on you personally would undoubtedly impact your business, even if you haven’t put a pencil to figuring out the exact cost. Consider the statistics below:

As many as 9 million Americans have their identities stolen every year. (Source: The United States Federal Trade Commission)
The dollar amount of identity fraud over the last two years totals over $100 billion. (Source: Javelin Strategy and Research)
11.6% of all identity theft (over 1 million cases) occurs online (with the remainder of personal information being stolen by more traditional methods like stealing wallets or overhearing a social security number). (Source: Javelin Strategy and Research)
It takes the average victim of identity theft more than 600 hours – that’s equivalent to nearly 3 months of 40-hour workweeks – to clear their name and clean up the fraud conducted with their personal information. (Source: Javelin Strategy and Research)

 
Because identity theft and Internet fraud are often misclassified crimes, a culprit has only a 1 in 700 chance of being caught by the federal government. (Source: Gartner Survey, 2003)
Cybercriminals stole an average of $900 from each of 3 million Americans in the past year, and that doesn’t include the hundreds of thousands of PCs rendered useless by spyware. (Source: Gartner Group)

Why Small Businesses Are Especially Vulnerable To Identity Theft

With constant technological changes and the daily development of new threats, it takes a highly trained technician to secure even a basic 5- to 10-person computer network. However, the cost of hiring a full-time, experienced technician is just not feasible for most small business owners.

Many businesses try to do their own in-house IT support to save money and designate the person with the most technical expertise as the part-time IT manager. This never works out because this makeshift IT person has another full-time job to do and is usually not skilled enough to properly support an entire computer network anyway.

How Online Identity Thieves Get Hold Of  Your Information

Some identity theft does occur through more “old-school” methods. Some scenarios are stealing your wallet, raiding your business files, overhearing you give a credit card or social security number over the phone, or even raiding your business file cabinet. However, common-sense tactics such as avoiding public conversations that involve your personal or business financial information or putting locks on your file cabinets can be used to combat those threats.

On the other hand, Internet threats are much more sophisticated and involve greater “know-how” to prevent them.

The Three Basic Ways Cybercriminals Gain Access To Your Personal Information Over the Web:

  1. Phishing – Phishing is where online scammers send spam or pop-up messages to your computer and try to get you to provide personal or sensitive business information over the web. Online criminals will typically send messages that look like legitimate messages from your bank, credit card company, or other financial institution. There is usually a website link in the message where it asks you to update your contact information.
  1. E-mail Scams – Offers detailed sales pitches and links to informational websites. These seemingly harmless e-mails are the makings of an Internet crime. They’ll ask for your credit card information to buy a fake product or pay for shipping on a “free” gift.
  2. Spyware – Spyware is software installed on your computer without your consent to monitor or control your computer use. Clues that spyware is on a computer may include a barrage of pop-ups, a browser that takes you to sites you don’t want, unexpected toolbars, or icons on your computer screen, including those keys that don’t work, random error messages, and sluggish performance when opening programs or saving files. In some cases, there may be no symptoms at all.

Four Things You Must Do To Protect Your Company

While it’s impossible to plan for every potential scenario, a little proactive planning and proper network precautions will help you avoid or significantly reduce the impact of the vast majority of cyber identity theft you could experience.

Step #1: Make Sure Your Backups Are Encrypted

It amazes me how many businesses don’t have the security of encrypted backups. Encryption takes every little keystroke that you type and every little piece of data in your computer and turns it into dozens – or hundreds – of other characters. For example, just one letter, “A” could turn into 256 different letters, numbers, and symbols when it is encrypted. It makes it a lot more difficult for a hacker to figure out what the data is. On the other hand, if you DON’T have encryption, you are opening yourself up to a BIG risk of swiping your identity and other essential data. That is why it is crucial to ensure your backup is secured correctly.

Step #2: Make Sure Your Virus Protection Is ALWAYS On AND Up-To-Date

You would have to be living under a rock not to know how devastating a virus can be to your network. With virus attacks coming from spam, downloaded data and music files, instant messages, websites, and e-mails from friends and clients, you cannot afford to be without up-to-date virus protection.

Not only can a virus corrupt your files and bring down your network, but it can also hurt your reputation. If you or one of your employees unknowingly spreads a virus to a customer, or if the virus hijacks your e-mail address book, you’re going to make many people very angry.

Step #3: Set Up A Firewall And Update It Regularly

Small business owners think that because they are “just a small business,” no one would waste time trying to hack into their network when nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve conducted experiments where I connected a single computer to the Internet with no firewall. Within minutes, over 13 gigabytes of space were taken over by malicious code and files that I could not delete. The simple fact is that there are thousands of unscrupulous individuals out there who think it’s fun to steal your personal information just because they can.

These individuals strike randomly by searching the Internet for open, unprotected ports. As soon as they find one, they will delete files or download huge files that cannot be deleted, shutting down your hard drive. They can also use your computer as a zombie for storing pirated software or sending spam, which will cause your ISP to shut YOU down and prevent you from accessing the Internet or sending and receiving e-mail.

If the malicious programs can’t be deleted, you’ll have to reformat the entire hard drive, causing you to lose every piece of information you’ve ever owned, UNLESS you were backing up your files properly (see 1 to 3 above).

Step #4: Update Your System With Critical Security Patches As They Become Available

If you do not have the most up-to-date security patches and virus definitions installed on your network, hackers can access your computer through a simple banner ad or an e-mail attachment.

Most hackers do not discover these security loopholes on their own. Instead, they learn about them when Microsoft (or any other software vendor, for that matter) announces the vulnerability and issues an update. That is their cue to spring into action. They immediately go to work to analyze the update and craft an exploit (like a virus) that allows them access to any computer or network that has not yet installed the security patch.

A Simple And Easy Way To Ensure Identity Theft Doesn’t Happen To You

If you think, “This all sounds great, but I don’t have the time or the staff to handle all of this work,” Affinity Technology Inc. has a solution.

The Benefits Of Choosing Us

  • You’ll eliminate expensive repairs and recovery costs. Our network monitoring and maintenance will save you money by preventing costly network disasters from ever happening in the first place. We guarantee it.
  • You’ll avoid expensive trip fees while receiving faster support. Our remote monitoring software will enable us to access and repair most network problems right from our offices. No more waiting around for an engineer to show up!
  • How do faster performance, fewer “glitches,” and practically zero downtime sound? Under this program, that is exactly what we’ll deliver. Some parts of your system will degrade in performance over time, causing them to slow down, hang up and crash. Our preventative maintenance and network monitoring will ensure your computers stay in tip-top shape for maximum speed, performance, and reliability.
  • You will have ALL of the benefits of an in-house IT department WITHOUT all costs. As a Managed Network Service Plan customer, you’ll have access to a knowledgeable support staff that can be reached immediately if you have any problem or question.
  • You’ll receive substantial discounts on IT services that you are already buying. Most IT firms will nickel-and-dime you over every little thing they do; under this program, you’ll pay one flat, affordable rate and get all the technical support you need. No hidden charges, caveats, or disclaimers.
  • You will never have to fear a big, expensive network repair bill. Instead, you can budget for network support, like rent or insurance.
  • You’ll sleep easier knowing the “gremlins at the gate” are being watched and kept out of your network.
  • You’ll safeguard your data. The data on the hard disk is always more important than the hardware that houses it. If you rely on your computer systems for daily operations, it’s time to get serious about protecting your critical, irreplaceable electronic information.
  • You’ll finally stop annoying spam, pop-ups, and spyware from taking over your computer and network.
  • You’ll gain incredible peace of mind. As a business owner, you already have enough to worry about. We’ll ensure everything about your network security and reliability is handled, so you don’t have to worry about it.

There Are No Strings Attached, But You Have To Hurry…

As you might have guessed, Affinity Technology Inc. cannot extend this offer forever because time and staff limitations won’t allow it.

If you want to say goodbye to your computer problems, protect your personal and business identity and stop worrying about the security of your data from hardware failures, viruses, and hackers. Call us today at 770-486-2070.