5 Compelling Reasons For Small Businesses Cybersecurity Program

 There are several compelling reasons why small businesses should prioritize cybersecurity:

1. Protecting customer data: Small businesses often handle sensitive information such as customer names, addresses, payment information, and other personally identifiable information. Implementing cybersecurity measures helps to protect this information from cyber threats such as data breaches, hacking attempts, and other malicious activities.
2. Avoiding financial losses: Cybersecurity breaches can be costly for small businesses. In fact, according to a study by IBM, the average cost of a data breach for a small business is $2.5 million. This includes costs such as legal fees, compensation for affected customers, and damage to the company's reputation. Implementing cybersecurity measures can help to reduce the risk of these financial losses.
3. Compliance with regulations: Many industries have regulations in place that require businesses to implement cybersecurity measures to protect customer data. Failing to comply with these regulations can result in legal and financial penalties.
4. Maintaining business continuity: Cybersecurity breaches can disrupt a small business's operations, leading to downtime, loss of productivity, and potentially even business closure. Implementing cybersecurity measures helps to minimize these risks and ensure business continuity.
5. Protecting intellectual property: Small businesses often rely on intellectual property such as trade secrets, patents, and copyrights to maintain a competitive advantage. Cybersecurity breaches can compromise this information and put the business at a disadvantage. Implementing cybersecurity measures helps to protect intellectual property and preserve the business's competitive edge.

Overall, small businesses stand to gain a lot by implementing cybersecurity measures. By prioritizing cybersecurity, they can protect customer data, avoid financial losses, comply with regulations, maintain business continuity, and protect intellectual property.

Two Weeks of Cyber Hell

TRUE STORY:

I had a fringe customer who would call us when they needed something to their network.  They had roughly a Hundred Employees.  The internal IT department consisted of the office manager.  They used outdated unsupported operating systems and all day to day operations were performed by the office manager.

A hacker who phished their way to a Unsupported Windows 7 device, got hold of the machine, reversed engineered himself to SUPER USER status on the server, and went through the server and spent the time to figure out how the company was run.  About 2 weeks later on a Saturday night, they encrypted their entire network Computers, Servers everything.  Deleted all the backups and canceled the offsite backup.

They wanted $250,000 to get their data back and unencrypt all their data.

Luckily I was able to recover the data from the offsite backup and rebuild all of their computers.

The Moral of the story is , do not rely on untrained personnel and keep your tech updated to the newest revisions.

 

Inadequate backups

“Inadequate backups”

Following the global pandemic, organizations world-wide shifted to predominantly remote working environments. Unfortunately, a large number business discovered they were not properly prepared for this shift in operational process and continue to run into challenges related to ensuring network security and data protection.  Contact us today to assess if effectiveness and reliability of your current backup protocols and ensure that all employees have been trained on any new or alternative procedures

 

Let Johnny Use Your Work Laptop

Let Johnny Use Your Work Laptop

So your son and daughter used your work computer last night, now your companies server has ransomware.  There is not much to prevent this, have you educated your staff, created an Acceptable Use Policy which states that this may be cause for termination.