Managed Security Will Protect Your Small Business from Cyberattacks
In the early 2000s, cyber risks began to increase, but antivirus (AV) solutions kept small and medium-sized businesses safe. With AV updates, employee training, and software patching, most businesses were able to avoid the worst of cyberattacks—until now.
The WannaCry ransomware attacks were the industry’s wake-up call that cyber threats are changing, and many companies still aren’t prepared. Many business owners know someone who’s been forced to pay a ransom to retrieve data or even faced an extinction event because data and systems were too costly to restore or weren’t restored as promised. Still, others have experienced cleanup costs from other malware attacks.
Many business owners think they won’t be targeted due to their size or small attack surface. Yet as this chart shows, that simply isn’t the case. Cybercriminals increasingly target small businesses, as it is much easier to circumnavigate their defences than those of enterprise companies.
The Dirty Truth About Small Business Security
- Yes, you are a target: 61% of all cyberattacks targeted small to medium-sized business operations in 2021. Many cyber attackers see small businesses as an easy entry into their larger customers.
- You may not know you’ve been hit: It takes companies an average of 187 days to realize they’ve been hit by a data breach, increasing the business harm.
- Small business clean-up costs are high: The average cost of a data breach for organisations with fewer than 500 employees was $2.74M in 2018.
- You may face an extinction event: Of the small businesses that are attacked, 60% never reopen.
The Risks Your Business Faces Grow Every Day
You run a digital business. However, that’s increasing the risks you face. They include:
Connections are growing: You’re managing more devices, applications, and cloud services than ever before. | Shadow IT is a real problem: Your employees and businesses are using more cloud services than you know about, creating a possible blind spot for your IT team and security program. |
Passwords are a weak link: Employees often reuse passwords across accounts and use easy-to-guess passwords, or they don’t update them as often as they should. | Human error is hard to prevent: Your employees may use public Wi-Fi to do their work, accidentally click on phishing emails, or share sensitive data on cloud services or flash drives. |
The latest threats elude AV: Weaponized documents, fileless threats, zero-day threats, and ransomware lack signatures and slip through predictably scheduled AV scans. | You may have compliance risk: If your business works in a heavily regulated business, you may face regulator fines in addition to cleanup costs. |
Data sharing: Your partners may not have airtight security, exposing your data to unauthorized access. |
