THE PROBLEM
Information Technology has become a daily staple in our society. And with that, businesses are ever increasing their threat surface area. No longer does business only take place in the confines of the four walls where employees, customers, and vendors interact. Instead, we have shifted our businesses to operate 24/7, 365 days per year, and have a far greater reach than ever before.
Employees interact with business in ways that were previously reserved for large, enterprise organizations. The COVID-19 pandemic only drove home the need for businesses to adapt to the ways that employees complete their day-to-day tasks. No longer are small and medium businesses permitted to sit idle and ignore their security posture.
“If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, you will be hacked. What’s more, you deserve to be hacked” ― Richard Clarke
With this increase in a remote workforce and the adaptation to business conducted online, employers have opened the flood gates to system vulnerabilities. Without the proper solutions and support, this can be a costly mistake–all in the name of conducting business in this new, potentially unknown realm.
CURRENT STATE
Though the statistics below maybe dated, one can only presume the cost of a cyber attack has increased. In fact, even though we don’t tend to hear of a small business cyber attack, they happen at a higher rate than those of larger enterprises. This is in-part because small businesses don’t always know the steps to take or have the IT Staff to prevent these attacks.
Not only are small businesses attacked at a higher rate, simply being offline or losing access to critical information due to a ransomware attack would cost small and medium business incredible amounts of money and the trust of their clients and customers.
With most cyber attacks on small and medium business today, we don’t hear about–it simply doesn’t create enough panic or cost as much as larger organizations, such as the Colonial Pipeline hack in 2021. It’s estimated that 72% of attacks affected business of 100 employees or less, and 40% are attacks on business with 500 employees or less. Many small and medium businesses don’t have the proper policies and business continuity plans in place to overcome a cyber attack, let alone the preventative services or protections to stop them in the beginning. In 2011, it was estimated that a cyber attack would cost a small or medium business, on average, almost $189K.
Now, as a small business owner myself, I know that would cause me to shutter and close my doors permanently. With the inclusion of cyber insurance, this could lead me to staying in business or at least protecting my business.
“And that’s why I started my own IT Services company–I realized there was a need and that I could provide these services at an affordable rate for small and medium businesses, like myself.”― Robert Herbaugh
With the understanding of cyber practices, the advantage of utilizing the cloud, Blue Sphere Technologies has a solution that provides protections and continuity for businesses of all sizes. Whether your organization has only a few employees and devices or you have a larger enterprise, we can tailor our services stack to your company, providing you around the clock protection and support.
NEXT STEPS
I now ask this, when was the last time your business reviewed their security policies or are you bringing in personal devices and connecting to your business network? Do you have identity management so that standards for security, such as two-factor authentication or time-based one-time passcodes are in use? Do you use a spam filter or are you utilizing a public email service provider? Do you have cloud applications that aren’t secured through single-sign on? When was the last time your devices performed an operating system update? Do you have antivirus and domain name system filtering to stop attacks before they happen? Is your wireless network properly secured and segmented for Point-of-Sale and regular staff? If the answer is “no” or “I’m not sure” to any of those questions, it might be time to schedule a meeting to see how Blue Sphere Technologies can help increase your cyber posture and provide cyber hygiene training solutions for employees.
In the end, cyber security is a major player in how businesses operate in 2022 and the future. It is up to the stakeholders and decision makers to ensure that protections and policies are in place to thwart a cyber attack, or at least decrease the threat surface area.
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