When we talk about organizational cybersecurity, many small business leaders subtly imagine that they are not as susceptible as big companies are. However, in reality, large companies can invest in more robust security architecture that makes it difficult for malicious cyber actors to target them, except for hardcore criminals. In fact, studies show that smaller companies are three times more likely to be the target of cyber-attacks than larger ones. SMEs also recover the slowest, given that they lack the infrastructure and professional capacity that larger organizations boast.
One more area where SMEs suffer is in terms of sheer structure. A smaller-scale business might not have as much money or labor to compete with larger players. However, with more resilient structures come greater protection against and resistance to disruptions, especially those that affect the information security architecture. And if there are any areas to which SME leaders must pay attention to strengthen their businesses, the following four are paramount today.
Consolidation
Cyber risks are a business problem. Many SME leaders still need to do away with the siloed perspective that treats cyber risks as a unique problem, separate from how the business operates. Such a view has created isolated IT departments where no one else really knows how anything works and errors are inevitable. Leaders with this perspective are also likely to consider cyber risks as simply a money or infrastructure problem. Therefore, they keep buying equipment and software that aren’t properly integrated into the business process.
At this point, it is vital to state that cybersecurity is a complex issue and you can’t boil down most challenges to a single factor. Addressing your information security needs requires taking a comprehensive outlook where each factor consolidates the other. So, while there may indeed be cases where better equipment is required, leaders must consider how new fancy tools do with the way they carry out business currently.
Decision Making
When you treat cyber risks as a business problem, you start to discover why it is important for the management to dedicate attention to them and treat them like challenges for the boardroom, which they are. This begins with leaders themselves gaining considerable knowledge of the information security landscape and determining the biggest potential threats to their organizational model.
This does not mean that decisions should simply be issued as instructions. Definitely not. Rather, what it means is that leaders and management staff must provide direction for the company in terms of cyber protection. This direction would be unique for every business, depending on its nature, size, financials, location, etc.
Internal Security
As cyber-criminals take advantage of the weak security infrastructures of SMEs to launch deadly, unexpected attacks, they particularly exploit some behavior of workers and third-party vendors to launch insider threats to small businesses. These threats occur because people within organizations are either negligent or malicious. Both factors speak to a deeper fault in the structure of information security, which opens cyber systems up to vulnerability due to a lack of zero trust control.
Your company probably has some form of cybersecurity control, but you need to conduct a full-scale assessment and revamp if your strategy is solely focused on external risks. To combat internal threats, you must conduct comprehensive cybersecurity training for your employees, enforce strict cybersecurity policies and controls and be proactive in monitoring what goes in and comes out of your systems. Like a chain, a company can be no stronger than its weakest link.
Data Availability
There is no approach to cybersecurity that can be successful today without being data-driven. The ability to view, at a glance, what’s working and what’s not is underrated among business leaders today, particularly when discussing cybersecurity. Collecting information on threats in real time is a proven way of achieving significant mitigation of cyber-attacks. The cyber-conscious CEO is proactive, not reactive, and harnessing data helps you get there faster.
This involves generating reports across the company’s systems, with the aim of finding patterns and loopholes that may put your business at risk, as well as opportunities to raise the current levels of cybersecurity.
Conclusion
Even though larger corporations make the news the most, SMEs are the true pillars of local and global commerce. As such, cybersecurity breaches affecting SMEs at scale can have catastrophic costs for society. In fact, in one study, 60% of SMEs that suffer a cyber-attack do not recover and shut down within six months. We can begin to imagine what danger this portends for the small business sector if this pattern is replicated at scale. We should prep our businesses to be stronger in the face of avoidable challenges.