This cybersecurity post is presented by Dashlane.
When you run a small business, you often wear a lot of hats. The strategy hat. The customer service hat. Even the “those floors aren’t going to mop themselves” hat.
Unfortunately, sometimes the network security hat is left on the hook by the door, and that’s just what hackers hope for — lax security and plenty worth stealing, from your cash reserves to customers’ credit card information.
When you think of data breaches, you probably picture headline-grabbing heists of personal data from big corporations. Small businesses tend to see themselves as too tiny to attract hackers, but that’s what you could call “wishful thinking.”
Cyberattacks on small businesses occur much more often than most people realize. A surprising two-thirds of companies with fewer than 1,000 employees have been attacked. Well over half have suffered a breach. Among all businesses, the average cost of an incident is $200,000. And yet only 14% of small businesses are prepared to defend themselves.
Dashlane for businesses: Because hacks can be fatal
When small firms fall victim to breaches, as many as 60% of them don’t survive the attack, CyberCrime Magazine wrote last year. And even if your small business isn’t in that unlucky group after an attack, it may take you longer to recover than it would a large business with lots of resources.
That’s why it’s better to avoid being a victim in the first place. Luckily, it is neither difficult nor expensive to protect yourself if you turn to Dashlane, the official password manager of Cult of Mac.
Drop your bad password habits
Even if your small business has never been attacked, it’s past time to drop your bad password habits. Stop allowing yourself and your employees to use super-easy-to-remember passwords (which are also easy to guess). The same goes for repeating passwords in many places. Stolen and reused credentials are linked to 81% of hacking-related breaches businesses suffer, according to recent research. Studies show employees use the same password in an average of 13 different places. And that bad habit tends to be more prevalent in small businesses than in big ones.
A password manager like Dashlane can generate a unique, complex and encrypted password everywhere you need one online. Every time you sign up for something on the web, and every time you want to change an older password, Dashlane generates a new one that no one will ever guess. Best of all, you and your colleagues need not remember the unwieldy string of letters, digits and symbols in any of your new passwords. You just use one complex password for Dashlane and the app does the rest.
Keep business and personal separate but make sharing easy
Dashlane allows users to create and store both personal and business passwords, payment info and secure notes in designated areas of the app. Then they can easily exchange passwords and information with others, with or without restrictions. Dashlane’s Admin Console helps manage everything easily. The console also allows the creation of Groups, which makes sharing information and access to accounts easy. When a password is changed, everyone in the group gets the update automatically.
(For more detail on how Dashlane keeps shared passwords secure, read “Share passwords and sensitive data securely using Dashlane.”)
Patented security architecture with tough encryption
Dashlane uses a patented security architecture and AES 256-bit encryption, the strongest method available, to keep your business’s information safe. Two-factor authentication is built into Dashlane by design, and it’s compatible with mobile authenticator apps and U2F keys.
Virtual private network (VPN), security alerts
With Dashlane business plans, you can switch on a virtual private network to make your online travels anonymous. The built-in VPN also protects you when you join public Wi-Fi networks and helps you avoid malware and trackers altogether. What’s more, it gets you around location restrictions on streaming content when you sign in using an appropriate server via VPN.
Dashlane also can send you security alerts. It will notify you about potential problems so you avoid leaving a trail of digital clues about your business for thieves to find. Plus, Dark Web Monitoring tells you if your company (or personal) information shows up where it shouldn’t. That way, at least you know and can do something to protect your accounts.
Price: Subscription options start at $5 per user per month.
Download: Get a free 30-day trial of Dashlane business plans
