Imagup General Magazine 2024
When you are running a small business it can be so difficult to stay on top of everything and even harder to make the decisions around where to spend your money, when there may not be a great deal of capital to play with.
One area of the business which you absolutely must invest in, however, is cybersecurity, and the fact of the matter is that you just cannot afford not to. You may read this thinking that the suggestion to invest in cybersecurity for your small business is a nonsense idea, but the evidence in favor of you doing so is simply too overwhelming.
Bharat Bhise HNA security expert has been spending a great deal of time in the last 12 months supporting local businesses with their cybersecurity infrastructure, and we watched him give a compelling speech last month at the tech conference in Dallas, specifically on the subject of why more and more small businesses need to wake up and smell the coffee when it comes to online security.
There are so many reasons to why you should be looking at investing money in your cybersecurity which will protect your computer systems and all of the data which you have stored. After reading exactly why you need security, you’ll be looking to buy a software suite in no time at all.
Biggest Risk
Cybercriminals have changed their approach over the last decade and instead of going after the big fish as they once did, they are now focussing their efforts on the low hanging fruit that is small businesses.
Think of it like this, instead of looking to steal the crown jewels in a high-risk heist, they have instead decided to star pickpocketing people, making less each time but drastically lowering the probability of getting caught, and being able to attack enough times to get a similar bounty.
The point here is that cybercriminals know that small businesses have very little security if any at all, and they can get in and out of your system before you have even realized.
Data and Info
Almost every small business uses computers to store its information and data, something else which has changed a great deal in recent years. We now perform online banking tore customer information, contracts, and even our business plans on the computer.
Businesses perhaps have all of the company’s finances on there too, plenty of juicy information which would be great for them if it happened to fall into their hands. This information if lost could do great damage and just think about that the next time that you log on to your online banking, something which any hacker worth their salt would be able to do with ease.
Cost of a Hack
You may think that a hack can’t happen to you but it certainly can and the cost of a hack will cause your business untold problems. When you are being hacked all of your systems will be offline, you will not be able to do a thing on the computers.
The hack will have to be stopped, likely by a professional team of experts, and then you will have to go about trying to reboot and repair the systems. Whilst all this is going on you will be paying our employees for work which they cannot do, you will be losing business and of course, you will have to pay the team of experts who come into repair and restore your systems.
The costs don’t stop there, however, oh no, they will go way into the future as the reputation of your company begins to get tarnished and customers are suddenly aware that owing to your lack of security, it is likely that their personal details are out there in the wrong hands.
What details do you have about a customer on your systems? Bank details? Social security number? Name, address, phone number? All of this could very easily be used to commit identity fraud. The point is that when you look at how much the cost of a hack is, the cost of security looks very small.
Ultimately hacks on small businesses can happen and frequently do happen, because the hackers know that you are unlikely to have enough security to be able to stop them. The cost of the hack, the damage to your reputation, also the invasive nature of the whole thing should be enough to convince you that cybersecurity is a must.
We put locks on doors, we tag high-value items and we install cameras for security, why on Earth wouldn’t you invest in a simple piece of software which is going to keep your business safe, and protect your information?
