Not a day goes by that you are not inundated with emails at work. Company relations, meeting reminders, to-do lists, email chain lists, client message exchanges-it takes up a lot of your inbox. And when people hit Reply All, you get at least 20 different messages with two-word sentence responses.

You get so many emails that you actually have had to remove the Gmail app from your phone. Though you felt guilty about this, you know it's best to leave work at work. As you come into the office the following Monday, there is widespread panic. No one can log into the company system. Email, financial services and the company website have all been shut down.

What's happened?

Your small business has experienced a cybersecurity breach. Because your company doesn't have advanced cyber protection, you don't know how long you're going to be down for or what's been affected. With a sinking feeling in your gut, you know things aren't looking good.

The Perils of Email Correspondence
After a bit of digging, you learn the source of the hack: the company email. Though you hear more often about hackers attacking company websites and card readers, many cybercriminals still prefer doing it the old-fashioned way: through email. IT Manager Daily reports that 95 percent of all data breaches started with a simple phishing email.  

A well-designed phishing email looks much like any other type. They gallivant your inbox as an order shipping update, act as a service announcement or promise a store credit at an establishment you frequent. In posing as a reputable industry, they are more likely to get an unsuspecting person to read the email, click on the prescribed link and fill out some information and POOF! the scammers have you and all of your sensitive information.

Now consider what happens when one of your employees opens up such an email using the company server. The scammers don't just have your employee's personal information, but they have everyone's sensitive information: yours, your clients and all of your other employees. The hacker could take this information and use it to make fraudulent purchases on your company credit card and the cards of your employees and customers. They could threaten to release the private financial information of your business and clients unless you pay a ransom. Or they could release your private emails with the public week by week, taking away your credibility as a company and hurting your employees.

Think of all the times you have written an email revealing sensitive company information. If this information is released, you will have an incredibly angry support staff and customer base. If your employees learn who makes the highest salary or who has been given some leniency on the number of sick days they've taken, they will feel that they have been mismanaged and not provided for. When it's learned or thought that your company does not provide for its employees, you will face public backlash. Just look at happened with Sony.

Make sure you're not the target of a devious scammer, and visit CyberPolicy for a quote today.