Small Businesses: Easy target for Cybercrimes

Small Businesses across the United States are exposed to a impressive set of cybersecurity attacks. Just in the last year research shows an increase of 424%. That is a mindblowing increase and it has to do in part because in the last 2 years small businesses have boosted their digital operations

According to the Small Business Administration 60% of small businesses now operate entirely online, meaning they depend on their digital investments, infrastructure, communications, data, and even presence. 

If your business yearly revenue depends on online sales, it means that the business is processing interested customers of your products or services 24/7, and this availability is fundamental for your market. If you stopped your website and online store one day out of 365 days, simple math would say you would loose 1/365th of your yearly revenue. For example if your revenue is $365,000 you would loose a $1,000. A manageable loss.

Now, what would happen if a hacker destroys all your data, spreadsheets with your accounting, inventories and records of purchases, the emails where you had the communications with your clients and agreements about next steps which you rely on to perform their work, which a  lot of times is time sensitive, and even worst, the hacker takes down your website, delete. Meaning, unless you have an offline back-up of your site -which most small business don’t- you are going to have to reinvest the money, time and work to build it again.

Some of your clients can’t feel like they are exposed to your business unreliable security, especially if you handle relevant information about them, best examples are law firms and accounting firms. In that case, the reputational damage would be catastrophic, and lastly, the government has to protect the consumers more than your business. There are several laws that you would become familiarized, once it happens, because you are legally required to report any hacking to the State and Federal authorities and your affected clients.

Of all the cybersecurity incidents for which we saw an increase of 424%, 85% of those were Ransomware attacks to small businesses and 66% of those businesses stop operating because the losses were too great.

We don’t see this alarming situation in the nightly news, as we see the rise in violent crime and personal scams, and the costs of inflation and lack of employees. Cybersecurity is complex, expansive and boring. 

We are here for you and your business. Our expertise is broad and comes from a small business need for cybersecurity instead highly specialized hackers and computer scientists that expect to be paid generously for their specialized skills. We work from a budget-friendly position to protect your business from the most fundamental and routine automated hacks, instead or charging you thousands of dollars to protect infrastructure you are just renting from service providers and from direct targeted state actors that have nothing directly against your business.