Why Cybersecurity Is More Important Than Ever For Your Business?

Why Cybersecurity Is More Important Than Ever For Your Business?

 

No matter the size of your business, a data breach can have disastrous consequences for the clients and the company’s brand. In customers’ eyes, it’s a violation of the sacred bond of trust based on your mutually beneficial relationship. And it only takes one hit to bring it to its knees. Worse yet, some of the damage may be impossible to repair for years down the line.

If this alone does not convince you, keep on reading. There are plenty of other reasons you should divert your attention to maintaining proper cybersecurity practices:

1. Technology is changing fast

New technology means a potential new attack vector. Take a look at the example of IoT and how little has been done to make these devices hold their own against a rising tide of attacks. Before deploying them, almost half of their administrators failed to change the default login credentials they come shipped with, leaving the door wide open to becoming the next target of a cyber attack. Due to this, increased regulatory pressure has been placed on the manufacturers of IoT devices to make them more secure by design.

And that’s not even touching on the topic of technology the bad guys can use to automate and coordinate their attacks. Let’s take artificial intelligence, for example. If it can be put to good use in scientific research and similar industries, what’s stopping the hackers from tapping into its potential? If this gets out of hand, we could see standalone cyber attacks even without a human pilot. And that is a legitimate cause of concern.

2. You can’t undo a leak

Once sensitive data gets out into the open, not a single force in this universe can undo what’s happened. Think about valuable trade secrets leaking straight into your competitors’ clutches or your customers’ personal data being used for impersonation or even identity theft.

In the first case, all of a sudden, you may lose the advantage that makes your business more successful than the ones your competitors are running. And in the second case, a class action lawsuit or regulatory fines could sink you deep into debt, with a high chance of having to close down your business for good.

To combat the ever-lingering threat of data leaks, prevention outperforms the cure by far and wide. At the very least, you should have the necessary cybersecurity measures in place within your business, which includes strong passwords, secure VPN-protected network transfers, and a form of encryption to protect sensitive files. The importance of passwords is self-explanatory, so we won’t go into too many details; suffice to say that they should be long, include numbers and special characters, and be updated often.

But what is a VPN? In short, it’s a way to transfer sensitive files from point A to point B without worries of having them intercepted; and a secure way to connect to the company’s network. Last but not least, encryption ensures that files remain useless to the one who intercepts them or otherwise bypasses your internal safeguards. The reason being is that an additional key is required to access files with a layer of encryption over them, which acts as an additional line of defense.

Why Cybersecurity Is More Important Than Ever For Your Business

3. Not even the big players are safe from cyber attacks

The recent years all serve as an example of why not even big corporations are immune to hackers. Although they tend to use state-of-the-art cybersecurity defenses, this shows that the payoff is well worth the effort required to bypass them. A simple ransomware attack can have mind-numbing consequences in the form of service downtime, data recovery costs, and regulatory fines. When thinking about how much of your resources you should be pouring into your cybersecurity budget, do make sure to recall the following events:

  • Yahoo’s breach that involved over 3 billion compromised accounts. The damage is estimated to reach $350m.
  • First American Corporation suffered a data breach involving social security numbers and other banking info.
  • Equifax, a global credit rating agency, suffered a data breach affecting millions of customers. The resulting costs surpassed $400m.
  • NHS had its services temporarily put on hold by a ransomware attack. It incurred massive expenses when cleaning up the mess.

4. The weakest link can come from within

Now that everyone has access to a smartphone due to how affordable they are, it’s not at all surprising that people are using their own devices for work-related matters. Therein lies the problem: if the company’s policy allows this, how can you make sure these devices meet the modern cybersecurity standards? Unless you’ve invested many resources into their education, you can’t. Since allowing these devices is an inherent risk your company is choosing to take on, the only other alternative is either educating the staff or forbidding them altogether.

As you can see, no matter the measures taken, the weakest link regarding cybersecurity can come from within an organization. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that whatever investments you’re pouring into it stop at the hardware and software level.

After all, someone is inevitably going to have to operate the company’s IT systems. Unless you’re willing to take matters into your own hands, you’d better hope they know something about proper cyber hygiene. The great news is that you, the business owner, can retain some control level by having an open discussion about it with your employees and ensuring that they understand the importance of what you’re working toward achieving.

Conclusion

In 2020 and beyond, maintaining proper cybersecurity practices remains a vital part of your business operations and essential to how your clients perceive and trust you. Based on everything stated above, the conclusion is clear: saving money in this department can come back to bite you later, and the costs incurred can turn out to be ten times the savings (if you’re lucky, that is).


Author byline

Emily Jack is a cybersecurity consultant, marketing communication manager and a freelance blogger. She is currently working on a cybersecurity campaign to raise awareness around the threats that businesses and individuals can face online.

 

You may also like to read – Effects of Technology and Digitalization to Your Business

Categories: Technology

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GIS Resources

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