Your Business Needs Cyber Vulnerability Detection Now
To be a successful business in today’s technical landscape you need more than just virus protection and firewalls to be secure against ever increasingly sophisticated cyber criminals. The frequency that these attacks are occurring is increasing day by day and attackers have now turned their attention to smaller business as well. Usually, because the protection in place is not as strong.
You may not have heard of these attacks, because much of the major headlines purely focus on the big companies such as the 2015 TalkTalk attacks.
However amongst the estimated 230,000 attacks a year there are many smaller business that are crippled by increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks. It’s thought that during 2016 alone, £34 billion worth of damage was caused to businesses as a result of cyber attacks!
In this post we’re going to outline some of the reasons you need cyber vulnerability protection and hopefully convince some of you that it is a real threat to your business.
Showing diligence
For business leaving themselves open, these attacks can be catastrophic, there are plenty of case studies that allow us to see this, for example in October of 2015 TalkTalk were systematically attacked resulting in more than 150,000 customer records falling into the hands of the attackers.
Furthermore, as a result of the attacks it is thought that more than 100,000 customers subsequently left the internet service provider as a result of it’s data vulnerability and in October of 2016 it was slapped with a fine for £400,000 for its ‘failure to implement the most basic cyber security measures’.
As you can see the consequences of being under equipped can negatively affect; your customers, business reputation and the businesses finances in the resulting fines.
A lot of small business don’t have the know how to have the correct Cyber Vulnerability detection. So it is crucial that they enlist the services of professionals instead of attempting this themselves. These people can identify potential issues much more efficiently and guarantee better long term protection.
Why is vulnerability detection so important
Firstly you have the risks. Most business are still completely in the dark on the issue of cyber vulnerability. Most business don’t have the scope to see how vulnerable they are to an attack and as a result they often try to ignore the risks. Although your business may not be able to notice it’s own vulnerability, there are people that can. Professional IT vulnerability companies are able to fully diagnose all of the potential loopholes within your site and can secure you for the long term.
Potential Costs
The next component is cost. Many see the short term cost of having cyber vulnerability detection as an unnecessary luxury, however what they don’t know is that it could cost them much more in the future in terms of business losses from a cyber attack. New legislation coming in 2018 could mean business are hit with fines that are equivalent of 4% of their turnover which might sound small, but can have a detrimental effect on a growing business.
Increasing Sophistication
Hackers are becoming more and more sophisticated as time goes on. And it’s also becoming possible for almost anyone to do. The massive debilitating attack on TalkTalk for example was conducted by a 17 year old boy. With it being easier to stay anonymous more people are attempting these dangerous attacks.
Your Businesses reputation
Finally you have a reputation. It’s no secret that the modern world has become a very open place and information can be accessed very easily. News headlines are alway waiting for a big breach of customer data to report on and as we saw with TalkTalk it often results in existing customers leaving the business or potential customers not joining the business.
So there it is, that should be some digestible information on the effects of Cyber Vulnerability and why your small business should take it seriously to protect, the reputation of your business, the information your customers trust you with, and the finances of your business.