It’s becoming increasingly common to wake up in the morning and read about yet another colossal data breach that has struck a major international organization somewhere in the world. Every day it seems like entertainment companies, hotel chains, and other entrepreneurial giants fall prey to hackers and pay dearly for it. But as a small to medium-sized business owner, that’s not necessarily something you have to worry about, do you? After all, you’re not nearly large enough to attract that type of attention, right?
Not necessarily.
When you consider that as of 2018, a massive 43% of all cyber attacks actually target small business owners, you begin to get a better idea of the dangerous climate you now face online. Unfortunately, the statistics don’t get much better from there.
2018 in Cyber Crime: The Story So Far
According to one recent report conducted by the experts at Heimdal Security, phishing attempts remain one of the most popular ways that hackers try to take advantage of businesses like yours. In a phishing attempt, you or one of your employees may get an email that you initially assume to be totally legitimate. It will likely ask you for an account username, password or some other type of identifying information.
If you, unfortunately, take the bait, however, your problems are only just getting started – that hacker now has that associated information and access to all of the accounts related to it.
All told, the average global cost of a single consolidated data breach incident rose to $3.86 million in 2018. Not only does this represent a significant 6.4% increase from just a year earlier, but when you break that number down to individual records stolen during an attack, the cost to organizations like yours is roughly $148 per document.
On the one hand, yes – this does appear to be a situation that is only going to get worse before it gets better. However, the good news is that this is also not something you have to take laying down.
Don’t Let Cyber Crime Stop Your Business
In the end, the most important thing for you to understand about all of this is that unfortunately, you cannot stop yourself from becoming the target of a data breach or other type of cyber attack. At this point, the statistics are very much against you. What you CAN do, however, is prevent yourself from becoming a victim – which is exactly what we work hard to do as your IT support Toronto partners at Primary Support Systems.
Since 1991, we’ve worked hard to guarantee that our expertise and focus are NOT limited to any one specific platform or hardware. Because of that, we’re able to stay as agile as you need us to be at the forefront of the constantly changing technology landscape. Regardless of how sophisticated hackers get or how devastating their tactics become, we’ll make sure you stay one step ahead at all times.
To find out more about the current state of data breaches and cyber crime, or to discuss the specifics of your own situation in a bit more detail, please don’t delay – contact us today.
