3 Reasons Every Small Business Should Invest in Cyber Security

By Breanne Wilson, CyberShield Global Contributing Writer

If you own a small business – feeling “busy” is an understatement.

Whether you sell goods a customer can physically hold or you offer services a customer can utilize, it feels like the list of things you have to do never ends, right?

Between running daily operations, keeping customers happy, driving profits, managing employees, keeping up with accounting, evolving to keep pace with competition and more, there are simply never enough hours in the day.

So when someone tells you “you really need to invest in cyber security for your small business” – you sigh and simply say – “I don’t need it!” or “I don’t have time!”

Before you write off small business cyber security as something you don’t need, can’t afford or don’t have time for, consider three important reasons why every small business should invest in cyber security.

 

1)           Hackers know small businesses are less careful about cyber security – that’s why they target them!

 

You may be thinking, “what would a hacker want with my small business? I’m not Target or Walmart – I’m small potatoes!”

According to Towergate Insurance, 82% of small business owners say they’re not prime targets for any kind of cyberattack, since they don’t have anything hackers would want to steal.

Contrary to popular small business owner belief, hackers would love to get a piece of your business. Any sensitive data they can get their hands on – they’ll take it! From a customer’s credit card information to someone’s name or login information to check out forms or employment applications, they’ll gladly use this data to commit identify theft.

Or perhaps a hacker may be in the mood to commit a DDoS attack, which is also known as a distributed denial of service. This means the hacker behind the keyboard will intentionally overload your website’s server with requests to shut it down – or they’ll shut down your network completely.

These are just a few examples of what hackers can do to vulnerable small businesses with a few simple clicks.

 

2)           If you are hacked, notifying your entire customer base takes time, money and often results in irreversible damage to your business’ reputation.

 

Though it may only take a few clicks for a hacker to get a hold of your small business’ sensitive data, it will take a lot more than a few clicks to notify your entire customer base and explain what happened following a security breach.

Communicating with every single customer takes time, money and effort that ultimately pulls you away from the daily responsibilities of growing your business. Unless you have structured post-breach solutions support to help get you through a cyberattack, recovering from a data breach of any kind can feel like climbing Mt. Everest for small business owners.

If you’re protected from hackers ahead of time with a solid cyber security plan, you can rest assured that you won’t have to climb Mt. Everest any time soon.

 

 

3)           30,000 websites are infected every single day. Of those 30,000 websites, 43% belong to small businesses.

 

Yep, that’s right. Hackers live among us and are everywhere these days!

And they’re always looking for the next small business target. Why? Because as a small business, you have more digital assets than a typical individual consumer has, but far less than a large corporation.

Your small business is right in the middle – a perfect target for a hacker who’s on the hunt for sensitive information to exploit.

You can avoid being in that hacker sweet spot by investing in pre-breach solutions that protect your business.

 

Invest in a small business cyber security plan that does the work for you!