Business owners need to be careful about network security threats in this day and age. A single network security threat can potentially bring down a whole small business, and unfortunately, this happens more often than you might think. This is because not only do many companies fail to hire technical support for businesses in the first place; but furthermore, many of them do not hire the right types of technical support consultants.

Outsourcing IT is all well and good, but it’s important that the IT being outsourced by business owners is sufficient to cover their needs. It’s estimated that just 72% of all IT service providers offered disaster recovery sources as of 2018. While many have grown since then and now do offer these important services, several still fail to do so. There is a reason why these services are so crucial. IT disasters do occur, and when they happen both business owners and their outsourced IT consultants need to be aware of what to do next. With that being said, below are some of the biggest network security threats facing businesses today.

1. Insufficient Updating

Yes, it can be rather irritating to see the constant prompts to update from your computer. You can do whatever you would like with your personal computer. But it’s incredibly important that business computers remain as up-to-date as possible. This is because a lot of security threats, whether they are individual hackers or viruses, target “holes” in computer systems. These holes are often created through insufficient updating. Now, some updates are automatic and these holes are created simply because users ignore update prompts. Other times, updates need to be manually installed by IT experts.

Either way, businesses need to adhere to a regular updating schedule. Employees should be alerted to the need to update whenever prompted, even if that means pausing their work. It is more important in the long term that computer systems are up to date and network security threats neutralized as much as possible than it is for employees to have that extra 10 minutes of work. Additionally, businesses need to work with IT experts that know exactly what they’re doing in terms of manually updating computers.

2. Denial of Service Attacks

Otherwise known as distributed denial of service attacks or DDoS attacks, these network security threats essentially overwhelm systems to the point that the network cannot process actual traffic. A network can be slowed to the point that it’s barely functional through these attacks, blocking your access to important resources and data. Additionally, while these attacks are happening and you’re distracted a lot of hackers attempt more serious data breaches.

There are a lot of ways through which DDoS attacks can occur; they’re hard to prevent. This is why a mere antivirus program is not enough to keep these attacks from happening. Rather, business owners need to have comprehensive cybersecurity strategies. This cannot be accomplished without professional IT consultants.

3. Ransomware

When you think of network security threats, you probably will think of ransomware threats even if you aren’t sure about it. This is one of the most common types of attacks to target businesses because it will essentially lock up a network or encrypt its data. The business owners will then receive a message demanding a ransom in exchange for the release of their network or data.

It can be difficult to disable a ransomware attack once it happens, so the best approach is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Because these attacks often happen through phishing, employees need to be educated about the dangers of phishing. Additionally, malware scanning and remote data backups need to be used to ensure that they don’t occur.

The reality is that without professional IT consultants, businesses are left vulnerable and at risk of attack. While some business owners attempt to save money by attempting to handle their IT needs internally, they often set themselves up to pay more in the long term after their companies are damaged by network security threats. Don’t hesitate to work with an IT consulting firm; just make sure that you’re hiring the right one.