Cybersecurity:
Even the Smallest Businesses Have Options

Cybersecurity is too often a can that small businesses keep kicking down the road.

It’s time to stop

Attacks on small businesses are high and growing. Worse, the attacks increasingly result in serious problems, even disasters, that cost a lot of money – even bankruptcy or closure.

One reason for this is the increase in remote work for which small businesses are often ill equipped to protect themselves or handle the problems when they are targeted.

Fortunately, awareness has increased, at least as indicated by the increase in business for cybersecurity companies over the past 12 to 15 months. One source estimate that businesses worldwide will face over $10 trillion in costs by 2025 – with most of that hitting small businesses.

Not the Big Guys

That may surprise some, who think of financial institutions or other large corporations when they think of cybercrimes. But that isn’t true today. Small businesses are estimated to face three times the risk of larger businesses. Sadly, this reflects an ongoing trend dating back several years. One of the less widely known problems that developed during the pandemic involved the increase in remote work, with its increased use of smartphones, tablets, and laptops to access business information – increasing the risks from bad actors. At the same time businesses and especially small businesses faced other unexpected costs and reduced income that made investing in cybersecurity difficult or impossible.

The result is that small businesses are an increasingly lucrative target for cyber thieves. Sure, the take may not be as large as that from a large corporation, but the likelihood of success with little risk is greater. And since their techniques usually work on many small businesses, it means they have a lucrative “mark” with only a little more work and very little threat of being blocked or caught.

The worst news may be the typical delay of discovery. The lack of cybersecurity by small businesses means that months can pass before an attack is even discovered, often through customer complaints. In some cases, the initial “break in” can lead the criminal to a network of other small businesses, including suppliers and customers. That also helps explain why cyber attacks are so disastrous to small businesses: they often result in supply chain issues with other companies that can bring on legal costs and regulatory investigation. Almost two-thirds of small businesses hit with a cyber attack are out of business within less than a year.

Prevention Now

Fortunately, there are some straightforward steps small businesses can undertake to reduce the potential threats. Some of the first are making a basic response plan and pinpointing what and where important data is located. Simply having good backups that can replace an infected system is often an easy way to avoid disaster.

More difficult may be training staff on how to recognize and avoid attacks. This is critical because most intrusions involve human error. A common example involves hacking into business emails. A phishing email, which appears to be a legitimate, official email may urge action, such as: “Your account has been frozen…click here to reauthorize restoration…” But with a phishing email, the click will instead lead the unsuspecting user to a fake webpage where they will be manipulated into revealing sensitive information. Fake texts and phone call can do the same thing.

Like other cyber threats, phishing attacks may sound easy to spot, but their widespread success proves otherwise. Like other forms of cyberattack, the criminals behind them are experienced at not only graphic and other design elements that mimic perfectly corporate forms, but they often use surprisingly sophisticated psychological techniques to push the right buttons and gain the access they want. Some tricks even use names of company officials researched from public information.

These and other reasons are why it’s important for small businesses to investigate their cyber security and act where needed. It’s not a can that can be kicked down the road anymore.