#something that also helps if u rely on external validation like me is just.. go see other ppl!!!! u will realize that person was not the

[cyancherub]

Hi, do you have any advice for getting over a breakup? I just had my first one (at 23 ugh) and I’m feeling kind of pathetic and like I won’t ever experience real love

my dearly beloved!! i feel for you so much. when my ex broke up with me a couple months ago i was probably at one of the lowest points in my life. that was a 7+ year relationship. he was my best friend. i thought i was going to marry him, have kids with him, be with him forever. so losing that probably hurt more than anything i'd ever experienced. it hurt like fucking hell and it left me feeling more empty and worthless than i'd ever felt in my life. 

BUT!!! I PROMISE that you are so much stronger than you know. you will be so surprised at the resilience you have. i actually feel stronger now than i have in a very long time. i realized that i was too dependent on my ex and that was making me lose touch with who i was if that makes sense? so i took it as an opportunity to get to know myself.

you’re going to feel like laying down and doing nothing and being miserable over this loss. and you CAN!! you should allow yourself a period to grieve, because you’ve lost a significant part of your life. and grieving is going to HURT,, but something i’ve learned in therapy which always helps me in times of heightened emotion is that no intense feeling lasts forever. hurt comes in waves. let yourself feel it, let it pass. some days will be harder than others. 

BUT!!! don’t let yourself wallow in these feelings. opposite action is an effective technique to handle depression and anxiety. (i know this because it’s something i use to manage MDD and GAD LKDFKL.) opposite action will help you get over a breakup. what this means is - the sooner you GET UP and start doing things, the sooner you’ll feel better. you have to pick yourself up, because no one's going to do it for you. it's HARD. some days are better than others. some days you’ll feel fucking miserable. but it’s an upward trend. the pain won’t last forever. you’ll be happy again. you’ll find joy - whether it’s in other people, or other things, or yourself.

stay busy!! not to distract yourself from the pain, but to find new things that make you happy. i forced myself to apply to jobs after the breakup and i ended up getting a new job that i REALLY like.

some of the other things that helped me cope - 

reach out to the people who love you. after losing someone important, you’re going to feel lonely and isolated. but you’re not alone. there are many people who care deeply for you. family and friends will be there for you. you can take this time to strengthen your relationships with people who are important to you. make new memories with them!!

focus on yourself. you don’t have to worry about what anyone else is doing. you can pour all your time and energy now into yourself. that is so, so liberating. your time on this earth is limited. valuable. use it for things you care about!! you can pick up old hobbies you haven’t had time for. you can start something you’ve always wanted to do. do things to better yourself. whether that’s moving forward in a creative pursuit, or in your career, or in school, or physically - invest your time and energy in yourself. at the end of the day, life is full of loss. people will come in and out of your life without explanation or warning. the only person you are guaranteed to have until the day you die is you. so be strong and work to be a person you are proud of. love yourself!!! i know it’s trite to say but in times like this it's important to nurture and treat yourself with kindness.

this isn’t a setback. it’s a natural part of life. if you take it as an opportunity to grow, you’re going to come out a better person. every relationship and every person in your life has taught you something. don’t fixate on the negatives - appreciate the good times that you had, appreciate everything that person taught you, and accept that that phase of your life is over.

let it go. let that part of you die. move forward, and you’ll come back stronger.

[jupiteronic]

hi, i have pisces mars, how can i develop it? i suck

don’t do the whole “i suck” thing for starters. It’s hard ik especially for those of us who are mentally ill and/or went through trauma and have conditioned thoughts like these, but also it can be helpful to remind yourself that your thoughts do not define you and to redirect your thoughts rather than bully them away or blame yourself for them (let me know if you want resources on this!) so as to diminish later blowups/ guilt-tripping behaviours. a lot of Pisces mars people very much are willing to change their ways/ listen to other perspectives like you! telling people you suck doesn’t really come across as taking responsibility though, a lot of people will take offense to that - rightfully so - and think you’re being manipulative or simply looking for validation, acceptance or forgiveness. probably wasn’t your intention, it’s just important to think about how others would interpret our behavior. 

accept that feeling bad isn’t an excuse to avoid preemptively thinking about how your actions impact others, it takes practice but make a conscious effort and you’ll be surprised how much good you can do despite overwhelming emotions! in a similar vein though, do NOT ignore or repress or minimize your emotions for the sake of others. if anything that will lead to more uncontrolled anger, manipulative behavior, and self-pitying feelings/thoughts which further reinforce the unhealthy behaviours you’re trying to rid yourself of

BEWARE OF WHO YOU SURROUND YOURSELF WITH

if you can, avoid fixating on what you did wrong and feeling shame + guilt for it. focus on how you can improve or eliminate the behaviours you don’t like & more importantly how you can make it up to anyone you hurt - especially if that person is yourself. easier said than done, especially for the obsessive types, but again i find that redirecting thoughts makes this easier than blaming yourself for fixating on your guilt. it can be an endless cycle really. how do you apologise to others + how do you apologise to yourself? if you don’t do either of those much, start working from there

get feedback from others where appropriate but take the feedback with a grain of salt until you have multiple perspectives

watch self regulation skills vids or read about it or... cant believe i’m saying this.. listen to a p*dcast. whatever helps you absorb information the fastest. ideally you would learn about this through written/ spoken word of both your own and others, through audio, visually, artistically etc to master self-regulation but that’s obviously not realistic or convenient for everyone so start small with what seems most realistic to you!!! I know especially Pisces mars can get quickly lose interest or motivation when it comes to things involving thorough detail lol. the next point expands on this but what works for me is pretending I’m my own parent. in a way we all are our own parents, but emotionally investing myself in that fantasy helped me apply my energy to things I’d rather not do (like doing assignments is still very hard for me, and to avoid discouraging myself from doing them, i kind of have a conversation with myself about it and kind of take on the role of child + parent. this is just an example - sometimes it just helps to use your traits to your own advantage, like Pisces mars being more interested in fantasies/emotionally engaging things than boring menial tasks; i used an emotionally engaging fantasy to motivate myself to do work, be creative <3). avoid relying on others for regulation & discipline. this can be very difficult for some of us + i understand and empathize with this. the point here is to be as independent as you can be.  also something going wrong does not necessarily mean it’s a sign from the universe to stop trying i promise

on the note of independence, take steps to becoming your own cheerleader. motivate & encourage yourself through positive self talk. in times where you feel demotivated, helpless or worthless, and say encouraging things to yourself. be aware that this will often seem silly and a waste of energy and u know how much Pisces mars like to save their energy at all costs lmao so this is definitely a common, normal reaction but every time this discourages you, remind yourself that IT IS worth trying and YOU are worth trying for yourself. sometimes I literally have to say cheesy shit like “you can do this” out loud repeatedly until I convince myself. it’s tiring & maybe embarrassing but recovering from chronic self-pity is even more tiring and embarrassing. avoid relying on others to uplift you & make you feel better. not to say that people shouldn’t help people, but just so you’re able to have your own back as much as possible

be more intellectually present oh my god 🤡 I beg of you. this can be very difficult especially for people who deal with adhd/mental illness(es)/trauma/learning disorders/developmental disorders etc. I don’t have all the answers for that but one thing most of us can do is engage in activities that nurture our intellectual health more frequently ; whether that’s reading (nonfiction preferrably), doing newspaper puzzles, crosswords/sudoku apps, problem-solving activities that don’t involve emotional appeal, etc just do it often. we all know how emotionally attentive Pisces mars can be but engage your intellectual side gamers (i.e. don’t game). I say this as a Pisces mars myself lolz please this is literally self-care

ik this is a snooze point but physical stimulation especially exercise can be really good for emotional wellbeing/ release. otherwise find literally any form of release - healthy forms I cannot stress this enough

wrt anger, bitterness, feelings of defeat: Pisces placements often have an external locus of control and thrive when they consider/have faith in something bigger than them. could be astrology, spirituality, religion, art, community, culture, all of the above, whatever makes u feel connected.

question your own intentions (but don’t overdo this); why am i acting this way or feeling this way? am I fishing for attention? if so, is there anything I can do to give myself the same warm feeling attention/validation from others would give me? am I acting like this because I feel hurt or taken advantage of? if so, is it possible for me to have a safe, healthy conversation about this with the source of the problem? WHAT is the source of the problem? what can i do about it? write this down if you can somewhere private and read it back to yourself later, notice any cognitive distortions in your thinking and make adjustments. this will help you practice using your intellectual side in distressing moments but there’s less point in using your thinking if it’s warped if you feel that’s the case for you. so google cognitive distortions & how to deal with them to get examples! try to make the adjustments next time you feel overwhelmed or have heightened emotions/senses

be firmer with your boundaries. with others AND yourself. the less you resist against boundaries the more your life will know peace because you are more careful with the people and/or behaviours you allow into YOUR life. do *not* ease up on your boundaries for the sake of other people. betraying yourself for others or immediate gratification is rarely a good idea in the long run. I’ve done the mistake of betraying my values for others many times and it’s caused unnecessary conflict which we are notorious for avoiding. that is until the evil puppeteer living in our brains snaps their fingers and commands us to go ham

[moiraineswife]

Ep 55 Caleb Meta

Warning: This post will contain a)- Spoilers for episode 55. If you haven’t seen it yet BEGONE. b)- Angst. Bc. Caleb. c)- yelling. if u haven’t worked out already: these posts are not planned. these posts are not thought-through. these posts are not edited. these posts are a stream of consciousness shrieking at the void that is u lot. Enjoy. 

So. Uh. That episode was like..................A lot. Lots to unpack. LOTS. So I’m just going to touch on Caleb and the very specific niche deliciousness of him being completely and utterly retraumatised in that episode and how it may or may not pan out in future. 

Meta under the cut bc it got Long. 

So, DIVING IN: the nature of trauma in itself is repetition. Nightmares, flashbacks (of all their various forms) are ways in which the trauma itself repeats. Basically your brain Cannot Cope with what’s happened so it tries to just put you through the same thing over and over again like process this please. 

Caleb has been dealing with that for at least a decade since the original trauma took place. Then we pile on the (highly symbolic and super-interesting in a really fucked up way bit of magic that is Modify Memory (i assume) which I have to meta on more in future) which is effectively a false memory that was removed (that his parents were guilty/in his twisted-logic mind deserved what they got) which makes a very interesting mirror for suppressed memories (again: big trauma thing. In which your brain Cannot Cope so hard it just blots the bad memory out of existence entirely) so he’s a whole mess of being trapped in an endless cycle of his horrible past (PTSD is a Trip, y’all). 

This is...An echo of that but it’s something new. It’s very much the same KIND of thing, so it plays in to the trauma-repetition, but it’s a new incarnation of it. History repeating itself, etc, etc, delicious irony, all that great stuff fiction-creators live for.  

It’s going to be deeply upsetting for Caleb. (No shit, Taryn). But it so beautifully, and terribly, feeds in to his deep-rooted fears that he is a toxic person, and that those around him are destined to get hurt (by him, not by him, it doesn’t really matter to the guilt brain, it’s all just fuel for that fire). 

For example: Liam spoke on Talks about how, regarding Molly’s death, Caleb almost expected it because yup, that seems about right, par for the course. It’s one of the big reasons he’s been extremely reluctant to let the Mighty Nein get close to him (he’s directly said this in canon at this point, in his conversation with Beau). 

He feels dangerous. He sees himself as dangerous. Partly because he sees himself as being constantly in danger, and by extension, those around him are also in danger. That’s external. 

The internal part of him has been screaming ‘you killed the two people who loved you the most in the world in an unprovoked attack because you’re a monster’ for over a decade at this point. Not only does he not deserve any of these people, he feels like he’s destined to hurt them, no matter what he does, or how hard he tries. 

This, uh, reinforces that in a very deep, obvious, and painful way. Not to mention the fact that, not only did he hurt them he hurt them with fire. Again. So it’s almost exactly the same pattern of shit coming back to haunt him for a second time: 

Trent: Mental manipulation magic - fire - dead loved ones  Demon: mental manipulation magic - fire - nearly dead loved ones. 

It’s Bad. It’s Real Bad. That boy is going to have the panic attack of his life when he recovers from the immediate adrenaline rush of the fight. It’s not going to be pretty. 

It’s going to drive home everything that little voice inside his head that sounds like Trent has been telling him since he joined these people. It’s going to undo all the struggle it’s taken to ignore that voice up to this point because don’t you see what happens when you get close to people? They can be used against you. You can be used against them. They become your weakness and you become weak because you care. Because this hurts. And if you were stronger, and smarter, then it wouldn’t... etc etc etc. *insert emotionally manipulative bullshit here* 

BUT! 

I actually think this could actually be good for him in a really weird way? 

Hear me out: 

Caleb has been living in a trauma loop for over ten years at this point. He’s been going over the same memories again and again and again, but he hasn’t done anything with them. He hasn’t actually fully processed what happened to him. And, and this is the biggest part: he hasn’t had anyone to push against. 

It takes a lot to recognise abuse. It takes a lot in the modern world when there are phones, helplines, the internet and, let’s be honest: awareness. There are words for these experiences and there’s more chance of, accidentally or deliberately, stumbling across help out there that can look at a situation from an outside perspective and go: this is fucked up. 

This is what Caleb needs. 

On his own it’s almost impossible for him to recognise what was done to him and fully process it and begin to heal from it in a healthy way. Caleb has not actually started the process of recovery for anything that happened to him yet because Caleb does not yet recognise/understand what there is to process/recover from. 

In Caleb’s mind, he is a monster. He did an unforgivable thing because he believed his parents deserved it as they were traitors. He broke because he was not strong enough to handle what he’d done. He was sent to an asylum and since escaping he’s just been afraid. That’s the only emotion he’s got towards Trent right now: fear. And it’s suppressing all logic, self-awareness, and the ability to think rationally about what went on. 

Caleb was abused. Caleb was manipulated, mentally, emotionally, and magically. Caleb was a vulnerable kid who was deliberately chosen, carefully groomed, and then skilfully brainwashed by a figure with an enormous amount of literal and emotional power over him. Caleb was abused. 

Caleb does not see this. 

Caleb does not recognise that he was abused. 

And I think this is where a lot of issues with Caleb kinda stem from in fandom? Because people look at him and just...How can he NOT understand that he was manipulated. Huh. Maybe he wasn’t. Because it’s just that damned obvious how could he not understand this? 

Abusers rely on that. Abusers rely on their victims not understanding what they’re doing to them. Particularly when their victims are young, with relatively little real-world experience, and absolutely no grounding/preparation to recognise or combat any of this, in a society that is more accepting of the kind of teaching that radicalised Caleb than most are. 

Caleb needs an outside perspective to look at what he went through and go ‘you know that’s fucked up, right?’ He’s kind of had that from Beau and Nott but not enough. Someone has to sit him down and go through every piece of what happened and be like ‘this is not okay’ ‘what he did to you was not okay’ ‘this is called abuse’ and then consistently validate those experiences until he understands. 

Caleb has over ten years of trauma to process and unlearn. That...That does not happen overnight. That does not happen because your new friend looks at you and goes ‘yeah that was fucked up, dude’ and suddenly it all crystallises in your mind and becomes clear. That takes work. And effort. And a willingness to feel something beyond fear for your abuser and Caleb is Not There yet. 

What this last fight does, though, is open up the possibility of Caleb starting to accept this a little bit. 

Jester: “What the fuck, Caleb?” 

Caleb: “I am sorry...They got inside my head.” 

This is actually....Kinda huge for Caleb? Actually it’s kinda massive. This is Caleb experiencing a trauma incredibly similar to what he went through when he was younger (but on a much smaller scale, with far less dire outcomes) and being able to look at it and, still apologise, but explain that he was not in control of himself, and that ‘they got inside his head’. 

This is the step he needs to take with Trent, too, this is the same admission that he needs to make to himself, and this is the first step that has to happen before he can even begin to start processing and healing his trauma. And he needs help with that. 

This is not the part where I say I expect the mighty nein to become Caleb’s therapists. But they can be friends, they can be a support network, but most importantly: they can be an outside perspective. 

They can’t process his trauma for him. They can’t work through his issues for him. They can’t take away any of his grief, or his guilt, or his pain, or his PTSD. They can’t make what Trent did go away. But they can point it out. 

They can raise a red flag. They can point it out and say ‘this is not okay’. They can put a name to it. They can validate it. They can do the things that Caleb cannot do himself, which is look at what happened and be able to acknowledge, without the burden of guilt, and the fact that it’s so much easier to blame, and hurt, and punish himself than a figure he’s terrified of, and say that it was not okay, and explain to him what happened. 

They can help him acknowledge his abuse and then he can start to help himself heal from it. 

But this fight is, essentially, a microcosm of Caleb’s past. And I hope that if (when, please god when) the mighty nein, who were all either a)- directly charmed themselves, or b)- resisted the effect but were aware of its intentions and capabilities, do not react the way Caleb expects them to react (ie: the way he reacted to himself) with anger, and hatred, and blame, that’s going to start unlocking things. 

I don’t expect a massive breakthrough next episode, don’t get me wrong, this is going to be a long, careful, painful process. But I think even the acknowledgement that someone affected that way by magic, or by emotional abuse, is not themselves, and is not, ultimately, to blame for what they may have done (or weak/somehow complicit in ‘allowing’ themselves to be targeted/victimised) is going to prove a really big thing for Caleb in the future. 

Just that acknowledgement that they don’t blame him for what happened, that they understand he wasn’t himself, and that it wasn’t within his control to stop what was happening could, I think, prove huge in terms of his recovery further down the line... 

TL;DR: Caleb experienced his past again on a much smaller scale with this fight, but having the party around him to react to him/it and reach out to him, and tell him it’s okay and that they don’t blame him will do A Lot for unlocking his potential recognition of abuse and recovery down the line. 

[uncloseted]

elis-closet submitted to effys-closet:

I did some Phsycology on Eura from US skins and I wanna see if I can Atleast show you a different perspective at looking at her.

As I read through your review of MTV’s very awful Skins US. I took a bit of interest and read all your points. And you made some pretty amazing valid points and an interesting way to look at US skins. And I looked at the character Eura a lot closer. So I downloaded all I believe are 10 episodes including webisodes and Cast says hi meet the cast etc. After doing some research I wanted to see if I can stir up a bit of idk the word for it but give people a more Open mind about Eura and how she differs from Effy.

In your argument you said Eura is nothing like Effy, and she’s pretty much a spoiled brat and weird and does things Effy would never do such as poor (idk what she pores) all over her body in front of her parents and they never noticed. So going through Episode 1, we were introduced as Eura who looks externally torn up like she has been living under a bridge, You made a good point where Kaya has the ability to act with her face and Eleanor lacks that COMPLETLEY! I agree, but Eleanor also gives off that, “what is wrong with her vibe?” Not in the very aggressive what is wrong with her but more of a I can’t figure out what the hell is wrong with her why is she acting this way. In her own episode I think 10, we were shown a side of Eura we havnt seen before, Tony seems to bail her out all the time when she gets into trouble or is forced to be in a situation that requires her to speak to someone. It would seem Eura asks for a lot but offers nothing to Tony in return. Eura’s reasons for not speaking I don’t think is mainly because her parents don’t pay enough attention to her. I believe she’s relied on Tony so much she hasn’t needed a reason to think for herself or say much because Tony seems to talk for her and help her out. Idk how exactly Selective mutism works in different ways but I don’t think she even has that to begin with. She doesn’t really have a reason to speak. So when she’s put into the position that she needs to speak , it kinda scares her cause she doesn’t know what to say. Watching her webisode it’s on YouTube I believe it’s called “Skins US webisode the ice queen.” Eura and Her parents are going to the principals office because she has to “be responsive” to the principal as her parents are signing her up for high school. I think without Tony she has no idea what to say in a situation, she acts without thought and hopes for the best. So of course she brings out her phone and asks Tony to bail her out by pulling the fire alarm. But before he does that the principal walks in and she stays looking at her phone, when tapped on the shoulder she just stares at the principal, u can see she’s trying not to engage because she couldn’t even look him in the eyes. This tells me she doesn’t know what to say or how to respond, and she looks scared, and I thought what if Tony wasn’t there, to pull that fire alarm. Eura seems to have a fear of speaking especially to new people. And since her parents don’t exactly pay attention to her when she is present she kinda gets that same thought Effy has, “they love her because she’s daughter 1 not because she is who she is.” I don’t think Eura Craves or tries to be interesting, I think her character is mainly her trying not to disappoint Tony (seeming the only one in the whole series that understands her and she understands him) but also have her own life. Because we see her talking to her therapist before, in her episode the therapist says “if you decide to speak to day you can come right in” or something like that. That tells us she has to become more trustworthy of people and be able to speak without being judged for it. Like she can’t speak because she is afraid to, and without Tony to help her out she doesn’t know how to think for herself so she acts and causes a lot of trouble without meaning to. Now her relationship with Cadie. When she meets Cadie, Cadie notices she doesn’t speak and she says “you do know their gonna put you in a clinic” and Eura just nods, like she is aware of what would happen if she doesn’t speak but acts crazy, Before this, Cadie says she went through like a year of not talking and it seems Cadie kinda relates to Eura except Cadie didn’t have anybody Eura does.

So to make this long story short lmao, I think Eura is afraid to speak, and without Tony, (because she hangs out with Tony and his gang a lot more than Effy ever did) she acts and can’t think for herself so when she does something she gets in trouble for it, such as giving the note to Michelle and not noticing Tea on the back of the paper, she tries not to disappoint Tony because tony has done so much for her and loves her so much when she makes a mistake that affects Tony she breaks down (as we saw in ep 10 after Tony said leave me alone or something like that she goes in her room crying), she takes what she can please and tries to offer something but she doesn’t have anything to offer in return for Tony, if there was a series 2, I’d love to see Eura try to think for herself and how she can get out of her Being afraid to speak situation. But that won’t happen so I can only say, is that Nobody likes Eura but I can understand her and I enjoy how different she is and I enjoyed doin my own phsycology on here. I kinda suck at making essays and shit so I hope u can understand my findings and evidence because remember there’s only 1 season so there’s not much I can find to support some of the claims I’ve mentioned it’s just my thinking. But I’d love to know what your response is to this.

She’s still not a good character.  Getting to this point of “understanding” her character requires a ton of extrapolation and headcanon. If she were well written, like the characters in Skins UK are, we would either have been given a clear idea of what her motivations are, or they would have kept her as a mystery in the background (which is what they did with Effy in series 1- she’s “just” a party girl who appears prominently once to move Tony’s plot forward).  Skins US made the mistake of wanting her to be a main character (in a way that Effy really wasn’t), but not being willing to budge on the “mysterious” thing, so she ended up doing weird shit for the sake of doing weird shit because the show couldn’t figure out a way to effectively let us know what she’s feeling and why.  I think they would have been well served to let her talk a little bit in each episode so that we got some sense of her motivation.  For example, if she had been trying and trying to get her mum’s attention and then poured yogurt all over herself, that would have made total sense.  Effy does the same in her series 3 episode where she's telling her mum she’s pregnant and then breaks things to see if she can get a reaction. But with Eura they don’t even give us that to work with.  It just seems like she has really poor impulse control.

[magzoso-tech]

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/more-than-150000-u-s-small-business-websites-could-be-infected-with-malware-at-any-given-moment-heres-how-to-protect-yours/

More Than 150,000 U.S. Small-Business Websites Could Be Infected With Malware at Any Given Moment. Here's How to Protect Yours.

Small-business victims were involved in 43 percent of data breaches over the course of a year, according to a recent report.

December 27, 2019 9 min read

It was March 2, 2016, and Melissa Marchand’s day on Cape Cod started out like any other. She drove to her job at Hyannis Whale Watcher Cruises in her mid-size sedan, picked up a latte with 1 percent milk at her local coffee shop and sat down at her desk to check her email. Then, Marchand got the call no website manager ever wants to receive: The site was down, and no one knew how to fix it.

After she dialed up the web hosting provider, the news went from bad to worse: Whales.net had been hacked and, to her horror, all visitors were being redirected to porn sites. Google had even flagged the company’s search results, warning potential customers that the site may be hacked.

“It was a total nightmare — I had no idea that something like this could happen,” Marchand said in an interview with Entrepreneur. “I’d say 75 to 80 percent of our bookings are done online, so when our site is down, we’re just dead in the water.”

At the provider’s suggestion, Marchand called SiteLock, a website security company, and granted its representatives site access. SiteLock discovered the hackers had exploited a security hole in a WordPress plugin, which gave them the access they needed to redirect visitors to racy websites.

By the end of the work day, Marchand sat in her car in her gym’s parking lot, speaking on the phone with a SiteLock representative to review the plan of action. She finally felt like things were going to be OK.

Within three days, Whales.net was back up and running, though it took another three weeks for Google to remove the blacklist warning from the company’s search results.

The hack hit about a month before the whale-watching season began in mid-April, and though it wasn’t peak season, the company still missed out on pre-booking tour groups from schools and camps. Marchand estimated the attack lost the company about 10 percent of its March and April business.

A risk for small businesses everywhere

Small-business owners were victims in 43 percent of data breaches tracked between Nov. 1, 2017, and Oct. 31, 2018, according to a 2019 Verizon report. The report tracked security incidents across all industries, but the most vulnerable sectors this year were retail, accommodation and healthcare.

What does the issue look like on a national scale? If we take the sample size of infected sites SiteLock said they found in 2018 — approximately 47,244 out of 6,056,969 checked — and apply that percentage to the country’s estimated 30.2 million small-businesses websites, minus the estimated 36 percent that don’t have one, then we can loosely estimate the amount of infected small-business websites to be around 150,757.

As a small-business owner, you may not believe anyone would target your website, but that’s just it — bad actors are likely not seeking out your site specifically, said Mark Risher, head of account security at Google.

“Sometimes, we talk about the distinction between targets of choice and targets of chance,” Risher said. “Targets of chance is when the attacker is just trying anything — they’re walking through the parking lot seeing if any of the car doors unlocked. Target of choice is when they’ve zeroed in on that one shiny, flashy car, and that’s the one they want to break into — and they’ll try the windows, the doors … the moon roof. I think for small businesses, there’s this temptation to assume, ‘No one would ever choose me; therefore I’ll just kind of skate by anonymously.’ But the problem is they’re not factoring in the degree of automation that attackers are using.”

Even the least-trafficked websites still average 62 attacks per day, according to SiteLock research. “These cybercriminals are really running businesses now,” said Neill Feather, president of the company. “With the increasing ease of automation of attacks, it’s just as lucrative to compromise a 1,000 small websites as it is to invest your time and try to compromise one large one.”

John Loveland, a cybersecurity head at Verizon and one of the data breach report’s authors, said that since the report was first published 12 years ago, he’s seen a definite uptick in attacks at small and medium-sized businesses. As malware, phishing and other attacks have become “more commoditized and more readily accessible to lesser-skilled hackers,” he said, “you see the aperture open … for types of targets that could be valuable.”

So what are the hackers getting out of the deal? It’s not just about potentially lucrative customer information and transaction histories. There’s also the opportunity to weaponize your website’s reputation. By hosting malware on a formerly trustworthy website, a hacker can increase an attack’s spread — and amplify the consequences — by boosting the malware’s search engine optimization (SEO). They can infect site visitors who search for the site organically or who access it via links from newsletters, articles or other businesses, Risher said.

Even if you outsource aspects of your business — say, time and expense reporting, human resources, customer data storage or financial transactions — there’s still no guarantee that that information is safe when your own website is compromised. Loveland said he saw an uptick in email phishing specifically designed to capture user credentials for web-based email accounts, online CRM tools and other platforms — and reports of credential compromise have increased 280 percent since 2016, according to an annual survey from software company Proofpoint.

How to protect yourself and your customers

How can small-business owners protect themselves — and their customers? Since a great deal of cyberattacks can be attributed to automation, putting basic protections in place against phishing, malware and more can help your site stay off the path of least resistance.

Here are five ways to boost your small-business’s cybersecurity.

1. Use a password manager.

There’s an exhaustive amount of password advice floating around in the ether, but the most important is this, Risher said: Don’t reuse the same password on multiple sites. It’s a difficult rule to stick to for convenience’s sake — especially since 86 percent of internet users report keeping track of their passwords via memorization — but cybersecurity experts recommend password managers as efficient and secure workarounds. Free password manager options include LastPass, Myki and LogMeOnce.

2. Set up email account recovery methods to protect against phishing attacks.

Phishing attacks are an enduring cybersecurity problem for large and small businesses alike: 83 percent of respondents to Proofpoint’s annual phishing survey reported experiencing phishing attacks in 2018, an increase from 76 percent the year before. Embracing a more cyber-aware culture — including staying vigilant about identifying potential phishing attacks, suspicious links and bogus senders — is key to email safety.

If you’re a Gmail user, recent company research suggests that adding a recovery phone number to your account could block up to 100 percent of cyberattacks from automated bots, 99 percent of bulk phishing attacks and 66 percent of targeted attacks. It’s helpful because in the event of an unknown or suspicious sign-in, your phone will receive either an SMS code or an on-device prompt for verification. Without a recovery phone number, Google will rely on weaker challenges such as recalling last sign-in location — and while that still stops most automated attacks, effectiveness against phishing drops to 10 percent.

3. Back up your data to protect against ransomware.

Ransomware — a cyberattack in which a hacker holds your computer access and/or data for ransom — has kicked off a “frenzy of cybercrime-related activities focused on small and medium businesses,” Loveland said. In fact, it’s the second leading malware action variety in 2019, according to the Verizon report, and accounted for 24 percent of security incidents. Hackers generally view it as a potentially low-risk, high-reward option, so it’s important to have protections in place for such an attack — namely, have your data backed up in its entirety so that you aren’t at the hacker’s mercy. Tools such as Google Drive and Dropbox can help, as well as automatic backup programs such as Code42 (all charge a monthly fee). You can also purchase a high-storage external hard drive to back everything up yourself.

4. Enlist a dedicated DNS security tool to block suspicious sites.

Since computers can only communicate using numbers, the Domain Name System (DNS) is part of the internet’s foundation in that it acts as a “translator” between a domain name you enter and a resulting IP address. DNS wasn’t originally designed with top-level security in mind, so using a DNSSEC (DNS Security Extension) can help protect against suspicious websites and redirects resulting from malware, phishing attacks and more. The tools verify the validity of a site multiple times during your domain lookup process. And though internet service providers generally provide some level of DNS security, experts say using a dedicated DNSSEC tool is more effective — and free options include OpenDNS and Quad9 DNS. “[It’s] a low-cost, no-brainer move that can prevent folks from going to bad IP addresses,” Loveland said.

5. Consider signing up with a website security company.

Paying a monthly subscription to a website security company may not be ideal, but it could end up paying for itself in terms of lost business due to a site hack. Decreasing attack vulnerability means installing security patches and updates for all of your online tools as promptly as possible, which can be tough for a small-business owner’s schedule.

“It’s tempting for a small-business owner to say, ‘I’m pretty handy — I can do this myself,’” Risher said. “But the reality is that even if you’re very technical, you might not be working around the clock, and … you’re taking on 24/7 maintenance and monitoring. It’s certainly money well spent to have a large organization doing this for you.”