Big Money Means Big Decisions

If you run a small business, you've probably heard over and over again about the importance of securing your data against potential data breaches. But what's really at risk?

There's probably more at stake than you think. Many businesses, small businesses included, should take the threat of data breaches seriously for several reasons.

You're A Bigger Target Than You Think

Just because you're a small business doesn't mean you're not a top target for attacks. In fact, small businesses are more attractive victims than you might think, and many criminals targeted small businesses in the previous year, and before.

Despite their size, small businesses still often store large amounts of information regarding their clients, vendors and employees, often in ad hoc and disorganized ways. If this information falls into the wrong hands, it can be used in all kinds of ways, including blackmail and future attacks.

Small business owners generally have fewer human resources and services to devote to cyber security and protect their systems against cyber attacks.

Training And Expertise Matter Too

Additionally, small business owners and employees are generally less aware of the risks associated with cyber attacks. It's not always clear to them exactly how much damage a data breach can cause, especially if data security isn't their primary job description.

Finally, small business owners and employees often have less experience dealing with legal and regulatory issues. In the event of a security breach, they'll have to deal with a sudden onslaught of regulations, lawsuits, and public scrutiny.

Money

To begin with, successful cyber attacks are expensive to suffer, and can have a significant financial impact on small businesses in several ways.

The most obvious way that a data security breach would cost money would be if money was directly stolen from the company using saved bank services or payment processor data. Fraudulent charges on credit cards can be difficult and time-consuming to overturn. Even if the money is eventually returned, small businesses can suffer cash flow problems as fraudulent activity investigation grinds on.

Worse yet, companies engaging in transactions on the blockchain can find their losses to be completely irreversible. If it can happen once on the blockchain, it happens forever.

The Government Wants To Be In On It

Your small business can also be fined. The UK's data protection authority, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), has the power to levy fines of up to £500,000 for serious breaches of the Data Protection Act. In addition, small businesses can be forced to reimburse individuals compromised in a security breach.

Finally, even if your small business is covered by cyber insurance, there's no guarantee your rates won't go up after a claim gets settled. If your car insurance goes up, so would your cyber insurance, after all. Cyber attacks cost money!

Indirect Costs

The indirect costs of small business data breaches are often just as significant as the direct costs. It's easy to measure the cost of a fine, or see how much money was stolen from an account. Better yet, you can actually do something about those issues. After all, you can contest a fine, or seek to have transaction charges reversed.

Let's envision a specific scenario. Imagine if your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) data was compromised, and your competitors knew exactly what your potential clients' objections and exact needs were - or, for that matter, your existing clients!

Don't Give Your Competition A Head Start

Imagine how trivially easy it would be for competitors to swoop in and steal your customers before you can close the deal. Suddenly, that data breach has cost you a lot more than hard numbers in your bank account.

You might not want to go very far out of the way to let those potential customers know that your data was stolen, assuming of course you don't have any regulatory duty to do so. It would certainly be a bad first impression for your company, after all.

But even if your leads never find out about the data breach, they could suddenly be bombarded with other businesses magically offering exactly what they need for the price they're willing to pay. Protect your leads!

Your Payment Processors

Another indirect way your company could lose money from a data breach is if payment processors are disabled or frozen during investigation. If one of your accounts is frozen even temporarily, a customer might not have a convenient way to pay you.

Worse yet, you would be faced with explaining to the customer why they are unable to use their usual payment solution, including potentially delivering uncomfortable news about the data breach. They might just be unwilling to move to a new payment solution.

Even if they're willing to continue working with you, they may also be willing to defer their purchases until the payment solution is restored. And if an investigation is ongoing, it might take longer than either of you want.

It Might Just Come Down To A Convenience Issue

Finally, even if you don't have to explain anything to these customers beyond that the payment processing method has changed, your customer might just take their business elsewhere until things have gone back to normal. And if your customer takes their business elsewhere, they just might not come back.

One more thing to consider - would you feel comfortable doing business with a company that lost your data falling victim to a cyber attack? Let's forget about whether it was really 'their fault' or whether they had taken all available steps to secure your information and contact details.

Even if you took all of the important steps to safeguard their confidential data, it still doesn't feel good for them to know that someone else lost their credit card number. Reputational damage is real!

It's Just A Big Hassle

Let's set aside all of the other material problems like lost money and lost business. If a data breach occurs, won't it be a lot of work to fix it?

Would you even know was done? It might take you hours - or more - to sort through logs to find out what data had been accessed, or how they got there. Where did the initial breach occur? What was the pathway they used to get there?

You might find that the attackers accessed software that you haven't used for years. Is it still even important software? You'll have to sift through plenty of usage logs to find out.

It Doesn't Matter If Nothing Important Was Compromised

Even if your data isn't particularly vulnerable to cyber attack, there's still a lot of work to make sure that the rest of your software and computer systems are secure. from cyber threats.

You'll have to sort through everything and make sure that the attackers didn't drop in any random code that you'll need to remove. Depending on what the attackers used to get in, they might have installed malware that will need to be removed.

If There's A Breach, Your Entire Network Is Insecure

Finally, you'll need to make sure that your security systems can never be compromised by a cyber attack again. If your business gets compromised again, or if they get your data again, you'll need to make sure that you're ready to deal with them.

You can think of cyber security the same way as a boat with a leak in the hull. A single hole in a boat can sink the whole boat, and given enough time, it will. You need to plug the leak before the vessel is seaworthy again.

Plugging The Leak

That could mean that you need to buy something. You might need to buy new hardware, or a new software solution, or change the way users or employees log in.

It will likely take a long time to go through your network to make sure that you've found every last piece of data that could have been exposed. Finding it is only half the battle - after all, it's been exposed to others already. You need to take steps to prevent cyber attacks in the future.

So What Should You Do?

Your incident response plan should help you avoid or minimize the damage from a malicious cyber attack. But hackers are becoming more sophisticated each year. A single incident response plan is unlikely to be enough to handle every contingency.

You can't control a domino effect of data breaches, such as if your customer is stolen in the wake of another company's breach, such as a financial institution.

With all of this being said, what can you do?

Take Basic Cyber Security Steps

As it turns out, there are several things small companies can do to prevent cyber attacks. First off, you should make sure that you're taking basic cyber security steps.

You should be using a firewall, ideally built into the hardware, to protect your network. This will protect you from all the basic threats that hackers can throw at you, and it will help you avoid being exposed to the problems that can occur when your firewall stops functioning.

Your Team Is Important Too

Your business should be in the business of training employees. Are they clicking on unsafe links or responding to dangerous emails? What are they doing that might cause them to fall victim to security threats?

You should do more than just send out a general warning about the dangers of clicking on untrusted links, malicious software, and other security threats. You might need to create training sessions for your employees, to make sure that they really understand cyber threats and how to avoid them.

You should also keep your operating systems and software patched. Far too many small businesses tend to roll out their software and then forget about it. This leaves the door open to vulnerabilities that can be used by hackers to get into their network.

Backups And More

You should also back up your data. It's easy to forget to back up certain types of data, or assume that you can always get the files you're looking for.

But what if your hard drive died - or was stolen? When you're backing up your business data, it's a good idea to make sure you have both local and remote options. If your local network was compromised, you might need to look at a remote backup option. If your remote backup was compromised, you might need to look at offline backups.

You should also encrypt your backup. No matter which option you use, your data is at risk of being exposed - both online and offline. You need to minimize that risk by encrypting your data.

Make A Plan

Do you have a contingency plan in case you're attacked? It doesn't have to be very sophisticated - perhaps little bit more detailed than the basic incident response plan that you've already created.

You'll need to know how to restore lost data, investigate what happened, find out what data was lost, and determine whether you have a responsibility to inform your customers.

These aren't all of the basic cyber security measures you should take, but those are some good ones to start with. They might not completely prevent a data breach, or they might not prevent all data breaches, but they'll help to minimize the damage.

Handling Your Clients

As mentioned before, your clients are going to be nervous in the event of a cyber attack. And why shouldn't they be? Your stolen record is their personal data, and it just feels bad to lose something in a breach you couldn't secure.

Your clients are naturally going to be nervous, but they will be much more likely to forgive you if your data was secured by the best cyber security solutions available. That's where Endpoint Detection and Response comes in.

Endpoint Detection and Response Solutions

As mentioned before, cyber criminals are becoming more sophisticated. Businesses of all sizes need to find solutions that can keep up with new ransomware attacks and other security threats, and preserve business operations.

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) services is the best defense small businesses can implement to help your company defend against most common types of cyber attacks. More comprehensive than standalone antivirus software, EDR detects malicious activity on your network, such as the effects of a ransomware attack, changes to important files, and so on.

You'll want to know everything about this solution and how it can protect your network and your important data - and your small business. Read on to find out more how we can help.

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Continue your exploration of Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and its benefits for cybersecurity. Learn how EDR enhances threat detection and response capabilities. Click here!