Cybersecurity. What You Need To Know, But Don't Want To Hear

6/11/2021

Cybersecurity. What You Need To Know, But Don’t Want To Hear

Cybersecurity demands honest conversation. Cyberattacks are a trillion-dollar industry. Some attacks are the result of other countries wanting to slow the US down, while most are cyber criminals looking for money! The FBI and Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)’s recently released 2020 Internet Crime Report revealing complaints of cybercrime nearly doubled from 2019”, costing the world $6 trillion annually by 2021, up 3 trillion from 2015. 80% of businesses that pay get hit with a second attack. You only hear about enormous payouts like the recent one involving Colonial Pipeline approximately at 4.4 million and the JBS meat industry at 11 million.

The ramifications of these attacks have grown beyond an individual’s social security information. Much more is at stake for hospitals that require the necessary equipment to save people lives or need immediate access to patient’s health information. Financial institutions must keep funds safe, government must keep weapons safe, towns must keep water safe, etc.. This list could go on and on, but the point is that individual and business safety is threatened with cybercrimes every day.

These threat actors have the upper hand, it is a massive problem that will only continue to get worse, AND that’s an unfortunate reality we must face. The fact that 65,000 breaches occurred last year, equals 7 wins an hour for the bad guys, is incomprehensible.

Technology must be protected. It’s comforting to believe that you can be 100% protected, but if you’re told it is possible, it’s simply not true. If 100% safe technology existed, everyone would be doing it!

However, you can make it much harder for a cyberattack to happen. Being prepared for the worst by taking proactive steps to safeguard your technology, training your team, and better preparing your business if the worst does happen, will help to mitigate the damage. It’s not just technology, but also the people and process that increase safety. If you do get hacked, you need processes in place to return to normal business operations, and alleviate the risk.

If your business is continuously down and dealing with support tickets, or if technology is consistently having issues, it lacks the proper hygiene needed to keep business systems safe. This is where MANY businesses find themselves.

Hindsight is 20/20. Many businesses will go through an attack to figure out how they need to protect their business technology. Many more will get hacked over and over and over again, which is a tough lesson to learn and a terrible way to learn it.

If you take your car to the mechanic with an issue and they advise you to get new brakes, are you going to get the new brakes that will stop your car immediately or are you going to risk it and hope the brakes work when you are fast approaching that pile up of cars on the highway?

This is an issue that requires a very candid conversation. Cybercriminals are going to steal from those who make it easier to steal, the path of least resistance. If you are an easier target, chances are, you will be hit at some point.

We are available for a discussion about your security, regardless of whether we do business or not. Conversations with us guarantee that you will be better informed to make better decisions.

We are open and look forward to answering questions, feel free to reach out 508.375.6444