Email is your primary channel for communicating with clients, vendors and employees. Fast-paced messaging is the lifeblood of most businesses, but email wasn't really designed with any privacy or security in mind.

Email was developed when the internet was used almost entirely for transferring information.

Thanks to social media, businesses can stay in close contact with their customers and while also attracting new ones. But what happens when one of these platforms doesn't guard the information you've given it? How does this affect its users?

Last month, news broke that a firm known as Cambridge Analytica collected private data from over 50 million Facebook users.

Hackers have plenty of ways to breach your systems. They can use complex programs to exploit software bugs, send emails to dupe you into downloading malware, or insert a malware-infected USB drive directly into your computer. However, another increasingly popular hacking method is a watering hole attack.

It seems that data breach incidents are rarely out of the news these days. Last year’s high-profile Equifax breach resulted in millions of consumers’ private information being compromised. More recently, the press has been having a field day with the massive Under Armour hack, after the sporting accessory and apparel giant had experienced a breach that potentially exposed the sensitive data of some 150 million users.

As tax season looms, so do phishing scams. For cybercriminals, this is the ideal time of year to deceive unsuspecting individuals into releasing sensitive private or company information. Businesses must therefore take extra precautions between now and April 17th to avoid hackers from selling your confidential data in the dark web.

The Equifax breach in 2017 exposed the personal information of 145.5 million people in the US and some parts of the UK and Canada, but the number of victims keeps increasing. In the beginning of March, the credit-reporting company revealed that more personal information was leaked.

With evolving technology comes evolving threats. Recently, a researcher revealed that a new type of scam freezes Google Chrome and tricks users into believing that their network security has been compromised. Little did they know that following instructions listed on the screen will lead to an actual security breach.

We all like to think we know better than to click on links that take us to compromised websites. Nowadays, however, it’s not so easy to discern legitimate websites from malicious ones. And if you’re not careful, you could walk right into a costly cybersecurity breach.

Users get around 200 emails in their inbox a day, including work messages, automated payment slips, and everyone’s least favorite email, spam. Spam messages are mostly harmless, but when you get more than 10,000 of them flooding your inbox, you’re probably the victim of a special type of spam attack.

No matter how much we’d like to avoid them, IT risks are simply impossible to eliminate completely. As long as your company uses computers and network systems for key business activities, dealing with some risks is inevitable.

However, by carefully planning ahead and taking preventive measures, you can greatly reduce the IT risks your company faces.