On the surface, starting a business is simple. You decide which of your skills is in demand, set a rate, register your entity and you’re in business. Of course, there’s a lot more to do and chief on your list should be cybersecurity.
“Cybersecurity — does it really matter?” you ask. Indeed, protecting your SMB business online isn’t always top of mind when establishing a new business. But cybercrime is much more harmful and frequent than you may think. In fact, 8 out of 10 Americans have been victimized by online crime.
Imagine clicking on a link sent to your email that looks like it came from someone you know, or maybe you’re surfing the web and click what you think is an ad for something you were interested in buying. Clicking on these links can cause you to accidentally install harmful software onto your system that can subsequently infect every single one of your devices.
This happens to thousands of businesses daily. Breaches are happening more than ever before as cloud adoption continues to grow. This provides opportunities for attackers to search for vulnerabilities and, once in your system, ransom your valuable digital assets or cause irreversible damage to your mission-critical data.
The reality is that most businesses aren’t prepared for cybercrime and are easily targeted. Moreover, estimating liability varies for every cyber-attack. Business losses can be thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Also, filing a claim for damages with your insurance agency is time-consuming and it can take weeks to receive help in restoring the damage it had on your business. Likewise, insurance companies will likely require the involvement of a forensic scientist, a breach consultant, and a claim agent to understand what the attackers stole and the liability it carried.
The best way to address this growing issue is to be proactive. In our current environment, attacks are inevitable. As cybersecurity attacks grow more sophisticated, it becomes increasingly difficult to anticipate what the next type of attack will be. Fortunately, cybersecurity software and AI are able to detect attack signatures and behavior on the fly. Security experts are also analyzing cyber threats in real-time. Once the pattern is detected, millions of devices can be protected. Including yours!
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is starting to support Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to provide grounds to help small mid-size businesses who are being hacked. To that end, our firm, Alternis IT, works with top industry security experts and we use the latest cutting-edge technologies to prevent the latest attacks. Knowing your options and being prepared is vastly better than having to “pay or pray.”
Contact us to learn more about our cybersecurity plans.
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