Insights

Regardless of the size of your business, today’s digital climate involves risks. In fact, smaller and mid-sized companies are open to more threats due to lack of protection and know how. Cyber security is a critical part of managing those risks and taking the necessary steps to protect your assets. It pertains to all the IT measures needed as preventative measure against cyber risks. Cyber risk is any risk of disruption, monetary loss, or reputational damage of an organization due to an IT system failure. Before stepping into the cyber security context, one needs to come to terms with the dynamics of the digital era and the highly vulnerable virtual environment of today.  

Investing in tools and systems that improve productivity has long been considered a necessary cost of doing business – a better set of tools creates a more productive workforce. In the 20th century, those kinds of technologies were essentially production-enhancing tools (think faster writing tools like the typewriter and word processors). Not all these improvements were required. Some companies did not feel the need to keep up with the latest trends. If you could afford them, great, but if you didn’t you still managed to get by.   

Everything fails. This is true for everything in life, including networks, databases and systems. No one can avoid failures and their lasting impacts. It is not so much the fact that they fail, but it is more about the costs and damage they leave behind, especially when considering IT downtime.

Whether you’re already in the cloud or thinking about moving an application or your entire IT infrastructure, security probably comes to mind first. Will your data in the cloud be safe from cybercriminals? And if you store customer data, you’re probably even more concerned.

​Online security is something you know is important, but your IT team is not the only one responsible for cybersecurity. Everyone from front-line personnel to the CEO should assume accountability. They all need to do their part to keep the digital assets of your business protected because anything that happens to one user could quickly spread across your entire company.

According to the FBI Internet Crime Report, the cost of cybercrimes reached $2.7 billion in 2020 for small businesses in the U.S. At the same time, an SBA survey found that 88% of small business owners feel their business is vulnerable to a cyber-attack. That survey also revealed many small to medium businesses can’t afford professional IT solutions, and they have limited internal resources to devote to cybersecurity.

Many small and medium-sized businesses discovered they can operate more efficiently with a remote workforce as the pandemic forced most people to work from home. And even as workplace restrictions have started to ease, many business leaders are considering making the change to the remote model permanent.