You Aren’t Too Small to Be a Cybersecurity Target

“I don’t need to worry about cyberattacks… my business is too small to be of any interest.”

This brief rationalization is one of the most dangerous fallacies a modern business can make concerning cybersecurity, and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how modern cyberthreats operate. If this has been your mindset, we urge you to read on so we can help set you on a more realistic path.

Did You Know that Half of Small Businesses Experienced Some Form of Cyberattack in the Last Year?

While many may not want to admit it at full volume, these organizations and their hardships are quantifiable proof that small businesses are at risk of cybercrime and criminal activities… but why is this needed?

Simple: while small businesses once weren’t so often targeted as large companies were, a combination of these small businesses being just as reliant on IT and possessing equally valuable data can easily make them a sitting duck.

This combination makes it essential that businesses, regardless of their size, take the realities of modern cybercrime seriously.

A Lot of Cybercrime is Based on Scale

It may be tempting to view cybercrime similarly to more old-fashioned forms of theft. This is a mistake.

After all, in an old-fashioned holdup, the criminals responsible were limited in their scale. They generally could only target one business at a time, only able to steal from that one location and any poor saps unlucky enough to be present.

Nowadays, cybercriminals have no such restrictions. A single scam could potentially reach hundreds or even thousands of businesses, and since some will try to take what they see as the “easy” way out, a good portion of those impacted businesses will pay up.

Recently (as of this writing), strategic consultancy firm Dark Matter partnered with Dell Technologies and McAfee to produce a fictionalized but harshly realistic film called Butterfly: A True Cybercrime Story. We recommend you take the half-hour or so to watch it, as it is very well produced and does a pretty good job of depicting the impact that a cyberattack—in this case, ransomware—can have on just one business if that business isn’t totally prepared to deal with such an event.

As you watch it, I want you to keep something in mind:

This film depicts the experience of a relatively small business dealing with a cyberattack. In reality, dozens of organizations could have almost identical experiences simultaneously, depending on how effective the cybercriminal’s ruse was. So, as you watch the fictional JPX Construction struggle to deal with their situation, pay attention to all the wasted labor, the stress, and the funds that the situation forces upon them, and keep in mind that this is just what one business could feel. Today’s threats are designed to catch as many companies in their web (or, in keeping with the Butterly analogy, their net) as possible. In the world the filmmakers have created, JPX Construction is just the one example in focus, with dozens of others potentially experiencing the same thing or worse.

You Need to Do Everything You Can to Stay Out of the Statistics

Don’t get us wrong: today’s cyberattacks are more cunning and damaging than ever, but that doesn’t mean you’re helpless and can only hope you aren’t targeted. Many things can and should be done to prepare proactively for such an event, including the likes of:

• Keeping secure and isolated backups of all your data in case you lose your original copies in an attack.
• Making the critical investments proper cybersecurity requires to protect your business network, from servers to endpoints.
• Training your team members to recognize and appropriately respond to suspected cyberattack attempts and risk factors.
• Updating your technology and its protections so they are shielded from vulnerabilities, new and old.

We Can Help

While JPX Construction was depicted to have a very dedicated IT technician on staff, we know that isn’t the reality for many businesses nowadays… and those that do often have conflicting priorities their on-staff IT team is expected to honor. As a result, many companies, including some in Upstate New York, just don’t have the resources to support the team required to keep them productive and secure.

That’s where we come in. At Directive, we provide outsourced IT services and support designed to bring big business solutions to small and medium-sized organizations. Naturally, this includes a litany of cybersecurity services and protections. Find out how we can help keep your business safe by calling us at 607.433.2200.