How to protect small businesses from cybercrime

Cybercrime is an ongoing plague that is having a huge impact on medium and small businesses. (iStock)

Many people might be under the impression that the days of the “Nigerian Prince” email scam have long since passed. This hoax, which was designed to cheat gullible individuals out of money via mass email, became so well known that the term itself has long become part of the vernacular. It’s the information age’s ‘selling the Brooklyn Bridge’ story. While the theme has gone through many variations over the years, the ‘Advance Fee Scam,’ as it is called, is alive and well in 2019 with no signs of going away anytime soon.

The Nigerian Prince fraud is one of the earliest examples of mass cybercrime, an ongoing plague that is having a huge impact on medium and small businesses. Recent studies show these enterprises are victims of between 40% to 45% of all attacks.