Let’s say you’re a small business owner who is wondering if all the recent noise about cyber security in any way pertains to your business.
You are, after-all, the quintessential “locally owned and operated” company. You staff less than 20 full time employees and while your annual revenue is well into the comfortable territory, you’re hardly Bill Gates.
How could you, Joe Business Owner, be the target of cyber criminals?
If you do anything online, including email, your data could be at risk
Although some people believe that only large, Fortune 500 companies need to worry about being targeted by cyber criminals, that’s not quite the case.
Any business that uses a could account, email or has a website runs the risk of falling victim to a cyberattack. What’s more, is that your data could be breached without you ever knowing it.
A lot of this is done through the use of malicious software, where cyber criminals will try to breach your network through the use of email attachments and malicious scripts.
Since most small businesses don’t have an IT department, and they’re not always aware of what they should be looking out for, this puts their data, their internal files and their customer’s information at risk.
Data breaches are real
Remember how, a few years ago, when cyber criminals stole debit and credit card data from Target shoppers? Or, when sophisticated cyber criminals broke into the security systems for Equifax, which put the identities of tens of millions of people at risk?
Sure, Target and Equifax both survived (despite their respective PR nightmares), but most small businesses aren’t that lucky. It’s estimated that roughly 60 percent of small business go under within 120 days of suffering this type of attack.
It’s much, much harder for small businesses to recover their credibility and trustworthiness after a data breach.
The importance of investing in cyber security
At Rocky Mountain Computer Specialists, we understand that there are a lot of costs associated with starting up a business, and that it’s normal to want to try to control your expenses.
However, neglecting cybersecurity measures as a means of saving some cash, could cost you much, much more in the long run.
When you work with our company you can rest assured you’ll be working with a team of experts that is constantly investing in ongoing education. We know what today’s biggest threats are and we’re constantly monitoring the types of threats that may appear in the future.
Hiring a full-time IT staff can be cost prohibitive, but when you work with Rocky Mountain Computer Specialists you can customize the types of services you receive. If you want to ramp up during a particular month, we can help with that. If you decide you want to ramp down, we can help with that, too.