$20 million stolen from small businesses

Most small businesses I’ve talked to aren’t worried about the security of their computers or data. They feel they’re not a big enough target, that all they need is a virus scanner, or that nothing bad has happened yet so they’ll be fine. The link below is proof yet again that everyone should care about the security of their data, even if they don’t think they’re at risk. The FBI is investigating a number of cases where small business computers were broken in to from across the Internet and funds were transferred to cities in China. There are many things you can do to reduce the risk of being affected by this type of attack. Using more than one creates an ideal Defense In Depth layered protection, like I had mentioned in an earlier post about protection at nuclear reactors. One of the most effective but least convenient methods is having a dedicated, cheap computer that’s used only for your sensitive tasks like online banking. However once you weigh the effect of having large sums of money stolen against the minor inconvenience of using a $200 netbook when you want to do your banking it seems like a pretty good trade off.

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/04/fbi-20m-in-fraudulent-wire-transfers-to-china/