Do you know where your business is vulnerable to hackers? For that matter, do you know what you are doing on an ongoing basis to identify those vulnerabilities before the hackers can find and exploit them? How about the results of your latest pentest report? Or your employees’ level of preparedness for phishing and vishing scams designed to infiltrate your private systems?
Every business owner should know the answers to these questions, but so many don’t. Here’s why you need a playbook for your business’s cybersecurity.
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Growing businesses are some of the most lucrative options available to hackers
Yes, for a hacker, striking gold probably means hacking into one of the S&P 500 companies, taking millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of sensitive data, and running back out the door undetected. For even the best hacker, however, that’s a ‘dream on’ scenario, like winning the lottery or being cast on a Hollywood set because the director saw you out of the corner of his eye and immediately saw your potential.
Why? Because these companies have the most robust security surrounding them, with constant observation and entire teams of security experts ready to jump on any potential vulnerability or weak point before it is exploited.
True, data breaches for major companies can and do happen, but given the non-stop onslaught of attempts against them every single day of the year, the success rate is near-negligible for any hacker in the 99th percentile.
Growing businesses have less to offer, but they’re not totally insignificant. Customer data, financial information, and other sensitive insights (particularly about employees or owners) is easily lifted and exploited, since these companies haven’t got 24/7 monitoring on their systems – and, unfortunately, operate under the belief that they’re all but invisible to cybercriminals.
But, here’s the thing: You don’t need a robust in-house team of cybersecurity experts to stay safe. Agencies are able to service many clients, applying their know-how to you without costing you a yearly salary. Working through the right penetration testing platform, they can produce incredibly insightful, detailed reports on your vulnerabilities without wasting time on the admin side of things, meaning you get your results before hackers get to work.
A Breach Could Cost You Everything
So, that makes small and growing businesses nothing more than quick and easy wins for hackers, while the fallout can represent a total catastrophe for the small business owners.
The average cost to a small or medium sized business that suffers a data breach is somewhere around $250,000. That in and of itself could prove ruinous, but it’s not taking into account the reputational damage that can happen in customers’ credentials are leaked to the dark web. With most businesses required to disclose data breaches to customers, there’s no escaping from the ‘fall from grace’ that can happen when you let names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, and other identifying information slip through your fingers.
Larger businesses – and, indeed, some of the most prominent businesses in the world – have suffered this same public humiliation, but the difference is that they have many, many more customers than you, and entire teams of PR specialists who can get to work on rebuilding the company’s tarnished reputation in a matter of weeks or months.
You don’t have that same luxury, and enlisting the help of a PR company will cost you money that you may not even have anymore.
