The cybersecurity threat to SMBs is real. Matter of fact, beside this pandemic, I believe cyber-attacks are the largest threat that SMBs face.
Misplaced Hope
From my experience consulting in the Minnesota SMB space I observed business leaders make the incorrect assumption that hackers are only focused on large enterprise companies. I can understand their perception. As I read the daily news, the only companies being reported as ‘breached’ are national and world-wide companies.
The advantage we have at Asher Security is our daily threat intelligence. This non-filtered dose of truth reveals a great story on the depth of data breaches and exfiltration impacting SMBs.
Often my job as a cybersecurity consultant is to be an advisor to business leaders. That number one role of this job is to educate. We, as a security community, need to continue to the best we can to educate SMBs that is critically dangerous for them to believe there is not a cyber threat facing them.
SMBs should make it a priority to invest a cybersecurity program. This doesn’t necessarily mean spending a lot of money. This starts with an assessment. An assessment should ferret out the risks that exist to the SMB. Once reported and reviewed, the assessment results can then drive the initiatives that require further resources and spend based specifically on the unique risk the SMB has.
Cyber threat increasing for SMBs
Cyber threats are increasing for SMBs because cyber criminals are finding the enterprise companies harder to breach. The large companies have been maturing their cybersecurity programs for years and now have a strong program build upon industry framework, leading tools, and most importantly great people.
Cyber criminals are pivoting. They are no longer targeting a specific company, or size of business. They are instead finding exploits and searching for networks that vulnerable to the exploit. The result is SMBs that do not have vulnerability management program, a patch management program that includes the full scope of applications, or the detection technologies to notify them of this type of attack.
This has created easier targets for the cyber criminals. Hackers are now attacker a greater number of smaller targets, but all while lowering their own risk of being detected.
If SMBs are not aware of this their businesses will continue to be suspectable to attacks and targeted by malicious hackers.
Cost of SMB Attacks
A recent Ponemon study revealed that 61% of SMBs experienced a cyber attack within the last twelve months. More concerning is that 54% of those attacks involved customer information. The average costs of these attacks resulting in a data breach was $1.2 million.
The threat of cyber attacks to SMBs is real. The threat is increasing. The longer there is false belief that cybersecurity doesn’t justify SMB budget and resources, the more damage this threat will ultimately cause.
Overwhelming
Being an SMB company ourselves, I understand that specialized topics like ‘cybersecurity’ can feel overwhelming. For me, it’s taxes and accounting. Just the thought of these required operational topics makes me want to run and hide. But I know it’s something I need to deal with, I don’t have the skills and the resources so I outsource it.
I receive such a great benefit of outsourcing this burden to an expert. It doesn’t cost me a fortune; I believe it actually saves me money. They do a much better job, do it in less time, and prevent my from acquiring fines and penalties.
Solution
Considering partnering with a local Minnesota cybersecurity consulting company to help you with your SMBs security program.
An expert, like us, can assess your unique business risk and provide recommendations for a program that appropriately reducing risk to your appetite based on your budget, and available resources.
Experts can save you time, money, fines and penalties. But most importantly experts can make you aware of the threats that are targeting your business and save you from a data breach that could cost even more.
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