Cybercriminals have started thinking small.

A single hack or other cyberattack can cost large businesses millions of dollars in downtime and recovery costs, legal fees and fines, and damaged reputations. That has led to hefty increases in cybersecurity budgets, making the biggest companies harder targets, but also putting smaller enterprises in the crosshairs.

Cyberattacks on small businesses increased from a fraction of the total a decade ago to well over half today, according to the UNLV Free Cyber Clinic, a student-run organization that provides free cybersecurity consulting to small-business owners. Part of the clinic’s mission is taking the message of prevention to the business community, including at a recent LinkUp networking event put on by Startup Vegas, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the startup culture in Southern Nevada.

“Business owners would never leave their doors wide open, but far too many fail to secure the data that’s vital to the operations of their company,” said Matthew Noojin, work scope developer for the Free Cyber Clinic and an incoming senior at the UNLV Hughes College of Engineering. “We stress that cybersecurity needs to be everyone’s business.”

Students involved with the clinic get hands-on experience in cybersecurity, a field the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts will grow by a third this decade, much faster than most other occupations.

“UNLV is out front on this important issue,” said Heather Brown, president and co-founder of StartUp Vegas who also serves as a university regent. “The Free Cyber Clinic is an asset to current business owners while preparing students for careers in this vital and fast-growing field.”

The UNLV Free Cyber Clinic works with clients of the Small Business Development Center, a federal program delivered in Southern Nevada by the UNLV Office of Economic Development that provides free assistance to small businesses in areas including business planning, finance and marketing. Business owners interested in learning more about the clinic and the SBDC can find more information and how to apply here.

The cyber clinic’s presentation warned that cybercriminals are getting more sophisticated, including using publicly available information and artificial intelligence to create “dictionaries” of potential passwords for unsuspecting individuals that are used to try to access their data. To counter that, advised Mehdi Abid, a cybersecurity graduate student and vice president of the cyber clinic, consider creating “pass sentences” for accounts instead of passwords, making it more difficult for criminals to access accounts.

Other Free Cyber Clinic tips to foil cybercriminals include:

• Know the source before clicking on links or downloading attachments.
• Make use of antivirus software and keep devices updated.
• Enable multi-factor authentication wherever possible.