Installers facing cyber attacks
By Elton Boocock, managing director of Business Pilot.
Half of all businesses report having experienced some form of cyber security breach or attack in the last 12 months, according to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and the cost of cyber crime to the UK economy is about £27bn per year.
We often think the cost of a cyber attack is simply the ransom paid to release important data, but it extends to non-productive downtime, loss of customers, remedial work to patch up weak defences, loss of reputation… the list is long.
But we need software and access to IT infrastructure to help build our businesses and scale up in ways that are virtually impossible with outdated manual systems.
So how do you choose the right software partners without putting your valuable data at risk?
The simple answer is that you interrogate the security of your digital suppliers in the same way you would any other supplier. If you had contractors regularly visiting your offices and showroom, you would carry out a basic security check to make sure you weren’t putting your business at risk.
It is the same with companies like Business Pilot that provide software platforms that help you run your businesses more efficiently and use sensitive information to link services together like accounting, customer details, and employees.
Just because we operate online doesn’t – and shouldn’t – mean we take security any less seriously than a company that is literally handed the keys to your office. In fact, we build security into every element of our operation.
For example, a recent Business Pilot update includes a ‘single sign-on’ for customers who use Microsoft Business (Office 365) accounts.
Passwords can be frustrating, but they are the unsung heroes of cyber security. It’s not unusual for people (including your employees) to keep default passwords, or use predictable easy-to-remember ones.
Our solution is a secure authentication that allows users to log-in to multiple systems using one username and password, and it significantly reduces the risk of security breaches associated with weak passwords.
This measure is one in a long line of security initiatives that feature in every element of the Business Pilot operation.
As a relative newcomer to the industry, we were able to build our CRM system on the latest and most secure frameworks available. And we update our codebase incrementally, ensuring that we remove any risk of security breaches.
This is supported with firewalls, anti-malware software, anti-virus software, and encryption – and all our data is hosted on UK servers.
I could get really geeky about the measures we take to deliver the most secure software product as possible, but I think it is fair to say that we will always go the extra mile.
Security is not particularly interesting, and when we release new software updates, we would prefer to talk about the benefits for you to grow your business, like the FENSA API or the Zapier integration.
But security updates are always taking place in the background, much in the same way as when your phone updates to the latest version. Quite often, there are no headline features, just ‘security updates’. And these are crucial to the ongoing safety of your business.
There are many things you can do to keep your business secure. For example: regularly back up important data (in the cloud if possible); don’t download dodgy software; allow your company’s smartphones to be tracked and wiped if lost or stolen; and don’t fall victim to phishing attacks.
When it comes to third-party software providers, you don’t want to lose sleep worrying about if your information is safe with them. At Business Pilot we can guarantee that not only are we fastidious about the security of our software and infrastructure, but we continually introduce new measures that help you stay safe.
