Business + IT Insights

“Dear friend,
I am a displaced Nigerian prince desperately in need of your help…”

By now, we’ve all become fairly savvy at detecting the average phishing scam. If foreign royalty is asking you to send money, or some other stranger cold-emails urging you to invest in a “too good to be true” proposition, you know enough to click spam!

No company is immune to cybersecurity incidents. Unfortunately, they're one of the most common and urgent information technology problems in companies today. While it’s the high-profile data breaches – like the latest to hit Facebook, exposing the personal information of 50 million users – that get the most attention, the reality is that we see small- to mid-size companies experience cybersecurity attacks and data breaches way too often. The global average cost of a data breach is $3.86 million and takes 69 days to contain. Companies that act quickly to contain the breach and conduct damage control suffer less.

Cybersecurity used to be considered “an IT issue.” Keeping data and files safe was the domain of the CIO, and no one else paid much attention as long as operations were running smoothly. Because data has become an enormous business driver for all types of companies, and cybersecurity laws have become stricter and more specific to address the growing risks for consumers and businesses, CEOs and other company leaders have begun to realize that staying on top of cybersecurity isn’t just a smart IT practice. Cybersecurity is now a critical business issue that impacts the health of the organization.

9 out of 10 phishing emails contain ransomware, and 91% of data breaches start with a phishing attack.

The consequences of ransomware and data breaches can be severe for a company's bottom line and reputation.

Is it possible your employees could fall for scams like these? If you're not sure, you might want to phish them yourself to find out. 

You probably heard about the ransomware strain WannaCry that spread globally in May, blocking customers from their data unless they paid a ransom.

WannaCry exploited a Windows vulnerability that Microsoft released a patch for two months earlier. This attack was (or should’ve been) a wake-up call to the importance of timely patching on every server and PC, every time critical security updates are released.

Spending heavily on cybersecurity makes sense given the risk, and can make an executive feel safe. Unfortunately, the major sources of cyber threats aren’t technological.

Cybercrime is steadily increasing and getting harder to prevent. Smaller companies are often left scrambling in the face of ransomware, phishing, social engineering and other digital attacks. 

Proactively combatting and preventing these clever, sophisticated schemes takes the right resources, but strapped for time and money, smaller businesses often default to a reactive approach. This can be costly.

A recent study reported that the average company had four ransomware attacks last year. These attacks had costly consequences, including investing in new technologies (33 percent), losing customers (32 percent) and missing revenue due to downtime (32 percent).

Because almost all important business data is stored electronically, virus prevention, detection and resolution has never been more important. Here are some tips to save your business from malicious activity and downtime.