Think you’ve got enough security measures in place within your company? How do you know what the next malware release will bring? Do you trust your employees implicitly? Of course you do - you hired them and they’re a good bunch of people! But even the nicest guy may inadvertently visit a website that’s been infested with viruses or fall victim to a cunning phishing scam.

Passwords such as “Password123”, “Mycomputer” and the classic “123456” can pose a very real threat to small and medium sized businesses everywhere. Easy to crack and hack, if your staff are logging in to company accounts with over simplified passwords, they are putting your business at risk.

The threat of being infected by malicious software is part and parcel of spending time on the internet, and no sooner have the antivirus and security software programs released an update or new patch than cyber criminals are scrambling for ways to circumvent them.

Something known as “state-sponsored cyber attacks” may not be something you have heard of until now. But with both Facebook and Google viewing the problem as serious enough to warn their users about, it seems this is an issue that could be here to stay.

It’s safe to say that malware attacks, phishing scams, and social media engineering practices are going nowhere fast. That means that, whether you are a home user or the owner or manager of a small or medium-sized business, if you choose to ignore safer online security practices you are putting your identity and the security of your company at serious risk.