The severity of having your company’s network breached is one of the top concerns of business owners in 2023. As technology evolves, so do hackers. Their tactics are tricky, misleading, and calculated. Small to medium sized businesses are the largest target, as they typically do not have the defense systems in place like major corporations. Below are five reasons why your small business needs to be on-guard from online hackers.
1. Hackers’ Skill and Knowledge
Think about it, you have a job, and it is something you spend the majority of your time doing. If it is a specific skill or craft, you build upon your own experience each and every day — the same goes for online hackers. Every day, hackers are trying to bypass the work of cybersecurity companies and just like anyone else doing the same thing day after day, they get better at it. Hackers know the best ways to penetrate servers through malware, disguise their identity, access a network from an inside device, and pay attention to software updates to attempt a zero-day breach.
2. Neglectful Defense
If your company isn’t constantly revamping their defense tactics, hackers might find access points as you continue to update your servers but not your cybersecurity. When a company arrogantly neglects their cybersecurity but thinks they are okay because they follow compliance guidelines, they may find themselves in a world of trouble.
3. Financial Loss
Cyber-attacks may not seem real until you feel the effects personally, but you may want to learn from the statistics of other companies that did not prevent breaches. Cybersecurity companies and companies that have been breached, like Marriott, Yahoo, JP Morgan, eBay, and more can all tell you how detrimental a breach may be. But don’t just look at the big names, you can look at the average cost of a data breach for U.S. companies — $9.44 million. If it still seems unlikely, there were over 668 million breaches made in 2018 alone.
4. Reputation
What do you think happens to a company that has a cybersecurity issue? Do people just turn their heads and continue doing business with them as if nothing happened? That is unlikely. Further, if your company is breached and still manages to stay alive after the setbacks, will people want to do business with a company that could not protect their customer’s personal information? Will people want to work for a company that may have had to lay off a large number in order to pay for the damages from the breach? Again, this is unlikely.
5. Company Shuts Down
The biggest fear of a company experiencing a breach is the chance that the damage is too great and there is no overcoming the online hacker. Without a reliable cybersecurity company, this can most definitely happen.
These five fears are something to really consider — admitting to having some healthy fear is okay, it doesn’t mean that you have to lose all thoughts and feelings of hope. You can hire a cybersecurity company to not only metaphorically, but also digitally, create a fortress for you to escape online threats. For more information about what we can do for you, contact us today!
