Is my small business safe from identity theft?

When most of us hear of identity theft we first think of someone stealing information from our garbage can and using it to open an account. While personal identity theft is a real threat, many small business owners fail to realize that their business is subject to identity theft as well.

Many of us try to keep our personal data hidden from others; however, as businesses we often times promote pieces of this private data – address, contact information, phone number, and even business license number.

Just as you do in your personal life, it is important to take steps to protect your small business from identity theft. Some basic steps include:

1. Check your business credit report
2. Be sure to have an email security system in place to prevent spam, viruses, and phishing
3. Lock down the network – firewalls, encrytion
4. Shred important documents (dumpster diving is still common)

According to a Panda security report, a surprising 29% of small businesses don’t have a spam filtering solution. Additionally, 16% of small businesses do not have firewalls.

You can read more on small business (SMB) identity theft in the following CIOZone article.

Related posts:

1. Email-Based Phishing on the Rise?
2. Michael Jackson’s death creates a wave of spam email and malware threats
3. 2 arrested for links to the Zeus Trojan
4. Spam hits highest volume ever. Email security still a growing concern.
5. Trojan Lurking in Facebook

Tagged as: email filter, Email Security, email threats, Phishing, spam, spam filter