Bharat Bhise HNA – Why Your Small Business Must Pay Attention to Cybersecurity
You may think that your small business is not at risk from a cyber attack and this is completely understandable, after all it seems to be the bigger companies show are more at risk. Unfortunately, however it is wrong to think like this as these attacks can happen to absolutely anyone. My good friend Bharat Bhise HNA is an expert in cybersecurity and he works as an ethical hacker for many clients, working hard to make sure that their systems are fit for purpose. Bharat often tells me some real horror stories about attacks and their consequences on businesses, which is why it so important that you focus on this. Here is why this deserves your attention.
Low Hanging Fruit
Big companies work hard to protect their information and if an attack does take place, it will have to be a highly motivated and sophisticated attack for it to work. Your small business, on the other hand, will have very rudimentary cybersecurity, if any at all, which gives any hacker or cybercriminal the perfect place to attack.
Reputation
Let’s say that you have a small online business and you collect a little bit of information on each of your customers, basic stuff like addresses, phone numbers and perhaps account numbers. Your customers trust that when they hand over this information that it will be protected. Now should you be the victim of a cyberattack and this information were to be taken, the customer is not going to be a big fan of your business anymore, and they will tell all and sundry that your company is not to be trusted. An attack like this will cause immeasurable damage to your company’s reputation, perhaps so much so that you never get it back again.
The Cost of an Attack
You amy think that the only cost of an attack is the time you’ll lose whilst your systems are being repaired or the costs attached to the reparation itself, but there is far more to it than that. In fact you can add on to this the cost of the lost clients in the future as the result of your reputation being tarnished, the cost of beefing up your cybersecurity and of course the cost of lost man hours whilst all of this is being done. Small businesses can not afford to lose money like this which is why having great cybersecurity in the first place is recommended.
Crime is Crime
We protect products in a store with electronic tags, we add alarms, locks and cameras to prevent break-ins and we hire security guards to prevent theft, so why on Earth would we not install great cybersecurity to prevent an attack. It is time that small businesses took the risk of a cyberattack just as seriously as any other kind of crime, because it can and does happen every day.
If you run a small business then it may be time that you addressed your cybersecurity.
