Does your business have a cybersecurity plan?

Here’s a noteworthy fact: In 2012, companies with just one to 250 employees — what we typically think of as small businesses — were the victims in more than 30 percent of all cyber attacks. Entrepreneur Magazine cites this statistic, taken from the 2013 Internet Security Threat Report from Symantec, to demonstrate a point: Even small businesses need a cybersecurity plan.

Keeping Viruses at Bay

The Entrepreneur story offers some basic steps all small businesses should employ to safeguard their companies from cyber criminals. The first? Install anti-virus software on your computers. It’s true that this software won’t catch every virus which comes your company’s way. Nevertheless computers are easy targets if you don’t have any anti-virus software set up on them.

E-mail Mistakes

Many company hacks begin with employees accidentally opening suspicious e-mail messages. Because of this, Entrepreneur suggests that small business owners constantly remind their employees to delete any suspicious e-mail messages, even when they may be supposedly coming from people they know. Businesses need to emphasize to employees, to not click links they find after opening suspicious e-mail messages.

Protect Yourself

Entrepreneur also recommends that small businesses use firewalls to guard their inbound and outbound network traffic. Firewalls can prevent hackers from making use of a small business’ network. Firewalls can also block employees from accessing potentially dangerous Web sites.