Two steps to make your business more cyber secure? Too easy!

I’ve learned that just by doing some of the simple stuff, like using long passwords and 2FA, my business is more protected.

I’ve been operating for just over two years. I have a few apprentice staff every now and then, but ultimately, at the moment, I’m a one-man business.

I rely heavily on my cell phone to project manage my workload and my tablet to pay all my invoices and run my business through multiple applications online. I store all my credit cards, bank accounts and trade account details on my device.

There are lots of payment systems involved so it’s important that all that data is secure, and I can trust the apps and devices I’m using to secure that information.

Online attacks are becoming so common in our industry, but many could be avoided with some simple changes to how we do things.

I do a lot of handling of money and banking for my clients so if I made a payment to the wrong person, or my bank account was accessed by someone else, it’s my responsibility. I would have to explain that to my clients, and risk losing money and reputation.

I used to trust that the pin on my phone was enough to keep people out, but I’ve been improving my cyber security as I learn more about it. 2FA reduces the risk of fraud and losing financial information.

It’s one of the first steps in securing my accounts. I now feel better that when I log in I get prompted to add the 2FA code. Also, when I get a notification saying “someone has tried to log in” or receive a random text with a 2FA code, I know that someone has tried to get access to my account but failed because they can’t get past 2FA.

Implementing 2FA safeguards the important information we hold and protects the privacy of our customers with an extra layer of security.

We’re a beauty brand, predominantly based online in the e-commerce space. We’ve been operating for four years now with two employees.

We use smartphones mostly. A smartphone allows me to do 99% of my business administration, social media, website updates and enables me to work from anywhere in the world.

As an online company we collect various pieces of personal information on our customers. This includes everything from marketing and campaign information on preferences and interests to personal information, like names, phone numbers, emails and physical addresses.

Customers put a high level of trust in the company to ensure their personal data and information is not leaked and treated with a high level of security. We do not sell or give out any personal information relating to any of our customers or suppliers.

Two years ago, we were the target of a fraudulent customer order. It ended up being a significant financial loss for the business but also a lesson learned. I have since improved my online security systems and use a new ecommerce platform.

2FA is implemented over all or most of the systems we use, including our most important accounts such as banking apps for financial information and our website where customers’ information is stored.

2FA has enabled me, as a business owner, to remain confident in running a business online and lessens the anxiety around future cyber attacks

2FA protects us from so many issues, which is wild because it’s so easy to set up and, the consequences of not using it would be so much worse.

We’re a family-owned café chain with locations across the Wellington region. We’ve been in business since 2015 and currently employ over 35 employees, both part-time and full-time.

As technology is a part of our everyday lives, we use everything from computers and mobile phones to EFTPOS machines to advanced cooking equipment with self-cooking and cleaning capabilities.

When we were starting up, we were so focussed on our daily operations, staffing, and now COVID. It was easy to forget about cyber security because it seems like such an abstract thing.

We manage our orders from our phones or mobiles and also schedule and distribute our workers’ shifts. We collect practically no information on our customers. On the other hand, we have our suppliers’ contact emails, account numbers, and phone numbers as well as the details of all our employees.

Setting up 2FA was something that was easy to do and just does its thing protecting us without us needing to worry about it regularly. We’re putting more security steps in practice as we expand and begin taking online payments, but 2FA is a good start.

It gives us a peace of mind when managing transactions. It’s good to know that if someone gets hold of our passwords they can’t just walk into our accounts and clear them out.

If an attacker got into any of those, they could damage our business reputation either with suppliers by ripping them off from our email accounts, trashing our reputation on social media, locking us out of our account, or taking our hard-earned money.

2FA is such a simple and easy thing to put in place with really high security value. So, it’s kind of a no brainer.

We’re a local brewery in the Wellington region. We’re about four years old and pretty small. We hired our first full-timer one year ago, so we’re not in ‘start-up phase’, but it still feels like it.

I'm more tech savvy than some people, but I'm definitely not a ‘techie guy’. Even just getting the website up and running was kind of challenging. At the start the security parts of that didn't even really feature.

We have a lot more stuff happening online now and I'm definitely more aware of cyber security. It really wasn't on the radar previously. Now it is. I'm sure I’m in good company with a whole bunch of other small producers who start with and have, you know, a love and a passion for the product and the creation but also an awareness that there's a business aspect to this.

The brewing community is small, and we have a guild that sends out warnings when something significant happens, like somebody got stuff taken or there were dodgy invoices. We also get solicitations from potentially dodgy overseas suppliers.

There's a really strong brand loyalty customers have in the craft beer industry, trust around that is definitely high.

Since the start of the pandemic there's an increasing move towards online and customers want to feel confident that the businesses that they're choosing to support do the right things with their information. We use a cloud-based point of sale system and online email system. So, in the end, all of my stuff is cloud-based.

Now that we’ve got more permanent staff, having 2FA as part of our online policy is a good idea.

People think it’s an inconvenience, but once you start using 2FA, it’s a really simple way to protect clients’ data.

We have a professional office, working with young people to discover their potential in business and running business programmes to help students. Our company has 20 employees, but our wider team is about 45, including coordinators who work for our partner organisations and contract facilitators.

All our payments are done through invoicing and the company holds no credit card information. We have a large database of people; it’s valuable data that’s the base of the company. Trust is a high priority. Our database includes information about students as well as high-profile business people who are very protective of their data. We do everything to protect their details, so we try lock this data down as best we can, and 2FA helps us to do this.

We realised there was a need to implement 2FA across the business as a scammer has sent emails pretending to be me to the team to buy vouchers. As a consequence, the company lost a few thousand dollars. As a matter of protection going forward, we implemented 2FA to avoid scammers getting into any personal information and creating awareness across the organisation of the potential scam and to be aware of fake emails.

After an employee’s email was compromised, we made 2FA part of the staff policy when being inducted. This way they’re more aware of dodgy emails and have the know how to protect their accounts with 2FA measures.