Small Business Attack – Type of Data: Proprietary Information

All businesses have it. There’s information that is important to the business. Maybe it’s a contract. Maybe it’s a client list. Maybe it’s a product roadmap. Whatever it is, odds are that you’d lose tons of money if a competitor got it. However, it’s also vital to your operations. There are employees that need access to the information to do their jobs. So, there is likely one of to scenarios at work:

1) There’s a shared drive somewhere that has the proprietary information on it, and is open to all people in the company.

2) Each employee has their own copy of the information, so there are multiple versions on multiple workstations.

So, if someone can access your network as a user or even just take an employee’s workstation, they get your data and you lose tons of money.  How likely is that?

• Have you ever had a virus/malware infection in your business?
• Have you ever lost a laptop?  A smartphone?
• Have you ever had an employee that worked for a week or two and then left suddenly?
• Have you ever had a breech of a web server?
• Have you ever received an email with a funny attachment?  Did you launch it?

Odds are, that if an attacker wanted that data, they could get it easily. But with so many attack vectors, how do you protect the data and still allow people to access it?