Many of us have recently used Uber, Venmo and have even shopped online. We give startups our card and bank information without thinking twice about their cyber security. A startup has so much information about customers so keeping their information safe through Cyber Security is extremely vital. That’s 1-10 people maximum in a typical startup that are responsible for your security online.

The upcoming SXSW Interactive panel, “Cyber Survival for Startups & Entrepreneurs” features Nicholas Percoco, the VP of Global Services for Rapid 7. He will discuss more in depth the survival kit for a new mindset with different types of scenarios.

Tips for  startups: 1. Choose strong passwords. 2. Be aware of what you have in your environment, IPhone, MacBook, IPad and update those devices when need be. In every IOS update that comes out there are a handful of security fixes.

Startups tend to not have a lot of resources to spend on cyber security. They are not going to have billions of dollars for this, so Percoco mentions the importance of changing the mindset of the couple people working on the startup.

Cyber criminals find glitches and vulnerability in websites people use and then hack it in order to find out personal information about the company or the customers. These hackers are experts (engineers and computer science graduates) that know what they are doing and what they want to achieve.

“When you are working in a startup if you think about cyber security in a ‘what should we do from a corporate standpoint’ you will hit a dead end pretty quick. You might say we don’t have an IT person, we don’t have someone that would install this for us. So what it comes down to is ‘personal security hygiene’ rather than saying you need to have a full security person doing all these things for you.”

Something that startups should think about is setting a priority of whether they are going to make a billion dollars in revenue or spend 300,000 on cyber security. The reason is that it is much easier to spend 300,000 on cyber security when there are only 10 employees than it will be when there are 300.

Cyber security is important for startups to understand, given that when, “The start up has a billion dollar idea the risk is not about the consumer data being hacked because you do not have any, the risk is corporate espionage and basically how do you do the best you can to protect your idea because you are interacting with a lot of people through email, text and so forth.”

In this panel, Percoco will dive deeply into different cyber security techniques that startups can use:

1. “Online documents that are controlled. You are able to see what other person is doing with the document whether it be: reading, sharing it, or taking screenshots.”
2. Apps that you can download for FREE.
3. “Personal security hygiene kit”

Taking this advice and tips for better cyber security for your startup will enhance your knowledge for a better company and prevent hackers from obtaining any resources that ultimately would be detrimental to your business.

Find out more: Cyber Survival for Startups & Entrepreneurs