Hackers are Targeting Small Business
“60% of businesses close within six months of a cyber attack.” (The National Cyber Security Alliance)
What side of that statistic do you think your business would fall on?
Do you believe you’re immune from hackers because you’re nowhere near as well-known as Anthem or eBay? You are dead wrong. Smaller businesses do not have the same cyber security resources as larger businesses and hackers are banking on the fact that you are ignoring your cyber security. As a small business, you are a more attractive target because you are more likely to be less secure. Thanks to automation, cyber criminals are mass producing their attacks with numbers in the thousands with little to no investment.
It’s all over the news and almost impossible to escape from. Every day a new story pops up about a data breach or cyber crime. Corporations worldwide are beefing up their cyber security. It is not only the retail and financial organizations, the Pentagon is also following in their footsteps to protect their data.
Cybercrime has cost the US economy $100bn a year, worldwide that total goes up to $300bn annually, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In fact, McAfee found that almost 90% of small and medium sized business in the US do not use any data protection for their company and customer information. Less than half secured company emails to prevent phishing scams. Where does that leave the hackers? It leaves them to focus on you.
Despite the growing number of cyber crimes, many small business owners believe that hackers will not waste their time on small business. However, hackers are stealing enormous amounts of cash from small businesses and because these are small businesses, they do not get anywhere near the amount of news coverage like a Target or Sony would get. Most of these cyber crimes occur before the business owner can even realize their security has been compromised. The loss of customer data will change how your customers view you and these security threats are not going away anytime soon.
For small business owners, being proactive is an absolute must. Just like in football, your best defense is good offense. Otherwise, the fallout from a data breach can be astounding. You do not want to wait until your data is being held ransom before you think about cyber security. Otherwise, you will face quite the fallout from a breach.
Not only will you have to pay fines and penalties, you will have to conduct a forensic investigation and a PCI assessment. A small business will lose their reputation and lose the faith of their customers. Punishment will come in many shapes and sizes. You may not be able to continue to take credit card payments once a cyber breach has occurred, many merchants will suspend your account once this has occurred. Your payment processor may impose stricter PCI requirements and compliance which of course means it will cost you more money to continue to do business. Anti-virus and anti-malware can only protect a single computer from an attack. It does not protect your network hardware from attempted breaches. You need a good firewall and transport security in conjunction with updated virus and malware protection.
How can Axiom Cyber Solutions help secure a small business?
Axiom Cyber Solutions is offering Cyber-Security Protection for Small Business starting as low as $199 per month. We realize that most small businesses do not have a dedicated IT team and business owners may be handling their cyber security matters on their own. Let us take over and provide you with peace of mind. Axiom will provide your business a firewall and manage it so you don’t have to worry about securing your business. We will assess the security risks for your business and will help implement the right cyber security service for your business.
Axiom’s solutions come in different sizes and all our solutions are designed to deal with the attack vectors of today while being adaptive and flexible enough to continue to secure your network for years to come. For more information, give us a call us at (800) 519-5070. #FightBackWithAxiom
