In a recent report by Marsh (an insurance consultancy) and Microsoft, 79% of CEOs list cyber attacks in the top five risks in their company, overtaking economic concerns between 2017 and today by a wide margin. We consistently see the results of cyber attacks and data dumps, and couldn’t agree more. One only needs to look at the cost for a ransomware attack to understand why CEOs worry about this risk. As a recent example, Norsk Hydro suffered $61 million to $72 million in damages and counting from their ransomware attack earlier this year. Many businesses might even close their doors after a cyber attack due to economic loss and damaged brand image. Speaking of brand image; the top five most-concerning risks included brand image according to the same report. So, in total, a successful ransomware attack hits the top three most-concerning risks for businesses. Data dumps also seem to happen every other week now and they too can cause brand damage from the cyber attack. Don’t be part of these statistic.
We won’t tell you here to get a full enterprise system for a small business. We know not all businesses can employ cyber security experts to maintain such a system. A simple setup for security often outperforms complex but neglected systems. For many businesses an updated Unified Threat Management (UTM) device, updated antivirus on every computer, and a data recovery system provide a good start in mitigating the cyber security risk.