Considering that 80% of small businesses fail in their first year of operation, they don't need to increase their exposure to risk.
Yet many small to medium business operators make extensive use of PCs and cellphones or other mobile devices that do just that - increase their exposure to risk.
Viruses have long proliferated for PCs and range in payload and lethality. The primary impact is loss of information. Losing invoices, orders and financial data is one of the worst scenarios a small business faces. Losing bandwidth to spyware and similar malware is also a huge problem since South Africa charges some of the highest data transfer prices in the world. Throttled bandwidth or paying extortionist rates for additional bandwidth once the cap has been reached are potentially crippling to small businesses.
"People must protect their PCs from attack and ensure that their information is recoverable if an attack is successful," says Alexander Staun-Rechnitzer, COO of BullGuard, locally distributed by 10Net. "The most effective security software vendor will have a virus laboratory that reacts quickly to new viruses and updates subscribers regularly. A backup facility that copies information to an online space, CD, DVD or memory stick is also invaluable."
Mobile devices are under less threat because the viruses that can infect them are still in their first generation. That makes it relatively easy to detect them, remove them and protect the device from future infections. Loading security software onto phones will almost entirely remove the threat.
One cellphone virus has a particularly noxious feature. Late at night, when users are inactive, it generates multimedia message service (MMS) messages without activating the screen. That means users are unaware the phone is busy generating great volumes of network traffic at their expense.
"It's a first-generation virus and not particularly difficult to thwart," says Staun-Rechnitzer, "but unprotected users can be in for a nasty shock if every contact in their address book receives strange messages from them. Not only does it cost them to send the message but it paints the picture of an unprofessional organisation." Staun-Rechnitzer adds that, while viruses like that are circulating, they do not yet proliferate and should not be used to scare users into buying security software.
Data loss is a potentially more crippling outcome than vast quantities of network traffic. "Losing valuable information stored in Word and Excel documents, e-mails and contact lists is a serious concern for fledgling businesses," says Staun-Rechnitzer.
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