What happens when a cyber criminal gains access to the customer credit records that a business owner thought were secure? When it's your business and your customers, you must do whatever it takes to make things right. Unfortunately, the consequences that merchants face if their credit card data is breached may go far beyond a loss of immediate income. Setting things right for your customers may lead to a financial setback for you and your business. 

Recently, credit card data breaches have been a hot topic in the news, and the consequences merchants face if their credit card data is breached can be quite costly.  Obviously, for merchants like Target, this is definitely not the publicity that they want.  Surprisingly, smaller businesses may be more at risk and have more to lose from such a breach.

Risk to Small Businesses

Though small businesses may not believe they have anything to worry about, they actually may be more of a target due to their lower security standards.  A USA Today article stated, ...

Botnets, a group of malware-infested computers that act together to pollute the world with spam and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, may become more threatening with the recent end of Windows XP support on April 8th.

Because Microsoft no longer supports Windows XP, an old and outdated operating system,

Bot nets and key loggers pose a serious threat to the computer systems of all businesses. Even the most prepared networks can be crippled with the ongoing development of these cyber threats.

If you are a network administrator, knowing about bot nets and key loggers is the first line of defense against the malicious code of compromised computers.