August 28, 2018 | By stephen

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5 Staggering Stats About Your Small Business And Cybersecurity

• Cybersecurity

You’ve heard it before, the only constant in technology is change.  With small businesses, this is especially true.  Not just because of the constant focus on operations and marketing, but beyond that, small businesses are the main target of cybersecurity attacks. In fact, nearly half of data breaches, hacks and attacks are on small businesses alone!

Sadly, many small business owners think, “not me” however, it’s more a matter of “when” than it is “if” and the cost is far more alarming than you may assume. Cybersecurity damages cost more than $3 trillion in 2015. If that isn’t disturbing enough, cybersecurity costs are expected to hit $6 trillion annually by 2021.That’s just three years from now for its impact to do double the damage.

What does a cybersecurity attack look like?

You’ve seen it first hand – the barrage of ransomware ruining company data, phishing emails crafted to steal credentials, and social engineering designed to extort money.

5 Small Business Cybersecurity Statistics

Here, we share 5 statistics that are sure to open your eyes to just how prevalent the attacks are and how unsuspecting small businesses can be:

1. 43% of cybersecurity attacks target small businesses.
2. Only 14% of small businesses believe strongly in their ability to mitigate cyber risks, vulnerabilities and attacks.
3. Small businesses reported that only 38% regularly update their software solutions.
4. Only 51% of small businesses are allocating a budget to cyber security.
5. 60% of small businesses go out of business within 6 months of experiencing a cyber attack.

Clearly, these statistics can sound debilitating.  Fortunately, you can get in front of this with some important questions for you and your IT team. With headlines littered with such news, any successful small business owner should be asking themselves the following:

• Is your small business IT services provider educating you on the latest threats and issues of cybercrime – at least relevant to your industry?
• Do they continue to make recommendations for new hardware and upgrades?
• Do they bring new features and services to protect your company and educate your teams?
• Are they making you aware of importance of security measures and the threats in cyber security?

If not – it may be a sign that they aren’t adapting to this constant rate of change in technology and security.

Small Business IT Support

The truth is, it all begins and ends with cyber crime. Without it, there’s nothing to cyber-defend.  Cybersecurity attacks currently represent the greatest transfer of economic wealth in history, risk the incentives for innovation and investment, and will be more profitable than the global trade of all major illegal drugs combined.

That said, it is imperative that, small businesses, especially, invest in a provider that has their finger on the digital pulse of these attacks and preventative or expeditious reactive responses for such.

At LeadingIT, we’ve embraced change from our start in 2010. Not only have we grown from 0 employees to 13, but also from 0 clients to supporting more than 2500 end users. We’ve evolved from fix-anything computers to solely working with organizations on an ALL-inclusive monthly basis. And we are ADAPTING as the technology and security landscape changes – oftentimes, daily. While some days it may feel like we are more of a security company than we are tech support, we are aware of and committed to the cyber security needs of small businesses that are subject to cyber attacks.