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Learning the hard way: Female founder’s $10k lesson in cyber threats
Starting a business can be overwhelming, and too often, one important task languishes on the to-do list: cyber security.
But did you know small businesses stand to lose an average of $50,000 in a cyber attack? Leaving your digital doors open to cyber criminals is a risk that few female founders can afford to take. Unfortunately, it’s a lesson Aami Mills, founder of cloth nappy business Mimi & Co, learned the hard way. She has shared her personal experience in a bid to encourage other female founders to prioritise cyber security.
A surprise attack by cyber sharks
It was a dream come true for Aami when she landed a spot on cult reality TV show Shark Tank. The Canberra businesswoman made a splash with the judges, pitching her one-size-fits-most sustainable nappies with inbuilt ‘poonami protectors’. She even successfully lured a shark to invest $100,000 in her business Mimi & Co. But when the day finally arrived in September 2023 for her episode to go to air, Aami awoke to her worst nightmare. She’d been attacked by cyber criminals. Just hours before her starring moment on Network Ten, she discovered the Meta accounts of her business had been hacked, and she was locked out. Online predators had drained her advertising account of $10,000 and set up fake, violent ads using her business logo, directing people to malicious websites, Aami says.
The mother-of-two says the ads featured confronting images such as fighting and “people trying to kill each other”, just as she was bracing for a deluge of viewers, and potential customers to her social sites.
The timing couldn’t have been worse
“It could not have happened on a worse day, when I was about to go on Shark Tank, and I couldn’t get access to my Facebook or Instagram accounts,” she recalls.
“I was pretty stressed. They hacked my account at 2am and by the time I woke up at 6am, they’d spent thousands of dollars.”
She says she could not access her social media channels because the hackers changed the administrator details.
“My personal Facebook page was linked to my business page, so they were able to get access to my advertising account,” she says.
“At the time we didn’t have multi-factor authentication on, and they were able to change the administrator.
“I would try and reset my password and get a message saying: ‘We’ve sent it to this … email’. “And I’m like: ‘Oh, my God, that’s not my email – that’s their email’.
They were able to start running their own ads, they set up their own pixel ads to their own websites and coming out of my PayPal account.”
The ads were directing anyone who clicked to 55 different landing pages which she says were created to gain access to people’s data. She says she was just as concerned about the reputational damage to her business as the financial loss.
An expensive lesson …. but help is at hand
“It was a very expensive lesson in hindsight,” Aami says.
“I’m glad it happened to me at that point in time, when we were a new business, not when we’re a five, ten, 15 million dollar business. That would be catastrophic. It was the wake-up call that I needed. I think I was really naive and thought ‘Why would they want to hack me? I’ve got nothing for them’. But they did want to hack me obviously, because we’re easy pickings.”
Aami has since undertaken training through the Australian government-funded Cyber Wardens program, and is urging others to do the same.
The Cyber Wardens program is a great (and free!) way for female founders to start shoring up their online security and has been designed specifically for small businesses.
Aami says she learned many useful online safety tips from the program, and has integrated them into her business.
“The Cyber Wardens course takes you through simple things like setting up multi-factor authentication and I couldn’t recommend it highly enough to other small business owners,” she says.
“You can never stop learning though, it’s important to stay updated on cyber security as a small business.”
Women are more vulnerable than men
A recent Cyber Wardens research report found women are more likely to have no confidence or low confidence in their ability to prepare for, fight and recover from an incident.
The poll of more than 2000 small businesses found 3 in ten women (36 per cent) can’t recall a time they’ve talked about cyber security in their business, compared to 20 per cent of men.
Join the Cyber Wardens program today to secure your digital assets and gain confidence in protecting your business. The course is specifically designed for small businesses and is free for female founders like you.
Click here to sign up for the Cyber Wardens course and start learning how to safeguard your business from cyber criminals.
