Make a call, back-up your website, and monitor – what to do if you run a small company

Borrowed from the BBC website on Thursday 22nd Oct.

Large companies normally have big IT departments and plans in place for this sort of thing, but smaller companies “are much more vulnerable”, warns Charlotte Wilson of cyber-security firm Check Point Software.

She tells BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme what these smaller companies should be doing right now: 

  • Make a call to whoever manages your website – which may be an external organisation. Wilson says you need to find out if the website uses PHP and if you’re affected. If so, do they have a plan in place and has this been applied?
  • Don’t assume anybody else has fixed it. Wilson notes that, even if you have a website hosting provider who oversees the underlying infrastructure, your business could still be responsible for using its software
  • Back up your website. Check that you can restore it too, so that if something goes wrong and you need to recover it quickly, you have a protected copy separate from your live website
  • Keep a watchful eye moving forward. Wilson recommends keeping a monitor on your website to pick up suspicious behaviour even after you’ve patched the problem. While there’s not been evidence of successful hacks so far, she cautions that you normally don’t know someone’s managed it until things go wrong
Chris Eaton

About the Author

Chris spent seven years as a creative artworker - taking other people's initial designs and turning them into accurate, print-ready artwork. When nobody would take a chance on him to step into a full design role, he decided to take matters into his own hands and branch out on his own.
Since then, he’s spent over 30 years working as a freelance graphic designer in and around Sheffield. Along the way, he’s collaborated with some of the best studios in the region and worked directly with heaps of brilliant clients..
In late 2025, when a local client went into liquidation, Chris saw an opportunity to step in and help out the clients who were left stranded. He took the plunge and launched his own agency to make sure those businesses had the ongoing support they needed.