The importance of cybersecurity

Every year seems to mark another “worst year ever” for cyber attacks around the world. Whether you are a Fortune 500 company, a local bakery, or are self-employed and work from a home office, you share a common business goal – to maintain your operation and productivity. You also share a new challenge that ALL companies face…cybersecurity.

In today’s world, a lot of things are connected. We are putting software everywhere. This is changing the way we live and how we interact and do business with the world around us. As technology becomes more and more deeply integrated into businesses, teams and customers become more and more dependent on it.

Unfortunately, this dependence makes us vulnerable if technology fails or users carry out an error. To avoid this, it’s important that technology is available, protected and secure.

The premise is simple: Protect your company and customer’s data.

The first step to protecting your business is to understand that the threat is real. Many small and medium business owners think that their company is too small to be at risk. This is a false sense of security. As large enterprises put strong defenses in place, cybercriminals move down the line to where there is opportunity; and the number of cyberattacks targeted toward SMB is on the rise.

Small businesses are not immune and, for some hackers, are actually the more desired target. The unfortunate truth is that many small businesses are easy marks. Large companies are spending a lot of money to protect themselves, and small businesses often don’t have sufficient, or any, security budgets to spend to defend from security threats.

Cybersecurity is a small, medium, and enterprise-sized business problem.

Of course, money is at stake in any cyber attack—but businesses, especially small ones, often lose much more than that. Security breaches can affect all aspects of a targeted company, from its operations and finance to its brand reputation and customer loyalty.

You start a business. You grow your company from an idea to a fully functioning and profitable entity. With success comes clients and, as with most companies, you store personal information either to be used in marketing or from a purchase. As a result, you hold the keys to many of the things that your customers value and treasure in their lives and it is now your responsibility to protect their personal information.

Additionally, your company has a myriad of confidential and private information internally that needs to be protected. Customer data, intellectual property and banking credentials are all valuable to criminals.

For a company who uses an information system to use and store records, this becomes a serious issue. The occurrence of a security breach where private records were possibly stolen is the last thing a customer wants to hear about. This could result in the loss of customers for the business. With enough attacks, the business itself could become obsolete.

While cost is arguable the biggest impediment to robust, proactive cyber security at small and medium sized businesses, the cost of experiencing a cyber attack can swallow an SMB whole. According to the Ponemon Institute, cyber attacks cost SMBs an average of $2.2 million.

These cyber attack costs are magnified if your company must temporarily suspend operations after a cyber incident. In addition to footing the direct and indirect costs of cyber attack remediation, your business must still pay everyday operational costs, such as rent, utilities, insurance, and payroll – and all of this while no money is coming in. If that sounds like a perfect (cyber) storm, that’s because it is. The U.S. National Cyber Security Alliance estimates that 60 percent of small businesses go under within six months of suffering a cyber attack.

1. Invest in cybersecurity training and education for your employees.  Most breaches occur because an employee clicked on a link or provided information that allowed a cybercriminal access to the network.
2. Be sure to have a business-class network security appliance in place. A NSA or firewall is like having a guardian at the gate of your network, which controls all the data coming in and out of the network.
3. Strong web filtering technology. Web filtering tools provide real-time monitoring of URL and content to block undesired access and uphold user permissions to protect your network.
4. Two-Factor Authentication. Access control to your computer network is paramount to security, which starts with confirming a user’s identity with two different components for access.
5. Effective backup. With ransomware as a prevalent threat to security and how you risk losing access to your company files, practicing regular backups of your network is a proactive step toward a continuity plan for your organization.

Protect your business today. Contact us.

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