Imagine your phone is ringing off the hook with customers calling, wanting to know what this email is about wanting payment from them? Even worse, you find out some of your customers clicked on it and paid the wrong account. You start looking around and realize your email has been compromised. Or you get a call from your employee who says they have a ransomware.

Do you know what you would do? Do you know what it could cost you?

Unfortunately, it happens every day. There is no size business or industry that is safe from these criminals. In fact, small business are more likely to be targeted because criminals already know they are going to have more vulnerabilities and it will be easier for their success. And if we keep paying ransoms, the cyber incidents will only continue to grow.

COV-ID 19 catapulted us into the digital world. Every business has a valuable digital asset. Banking, CRM’s, contacts, contracts, Employee information, ERP’s, inventory systems, Invoicing, and the list goes on of how we rely on digital data to operate. So, if you want to be successful tomorrow, in this digital world, you should have a strategy for your cybersecurity.

Thanks to cybercrime-as-a-service, attacks are easier than ever, and people get plausible deniability. There are Billions of dollars a year being made on the dark web by these cybercriminals. It’s so profitable it is considered legitimate businesses in respective countries. And it is common for these organizations to whitelist countries. But, guess which country is not whitelisted?! The USA! Whether it be an individual or organization, everyone is at risk. You can be an easy target, or you can make it difficult. Regardless, you should also be prepared not “if” something will happen but “when” it happens. What will you do? The longer it takes you to react, the worse it can become.

With the rate of advancements, the hackers are only getting smarter and quicker to stay ahead of the technology used to combat them. So, you have to not only protect yourself, but be prepared when you are the victim.

For your business to be successful you have to be proactive and reactive!

Proactive:

To be proactive, you have to put as much in place to prevent vulnerabilities, mitigate risk, and put what you can in place to protect your business. You lock your front doors and windows and put a security systems in place to pro-actively prevent a break in, the digital world is no different. You wouldn’t leave your door wide open, so be as diligent with the online world as you would the physical world.

Reactive:

Being Reactive is being prepared and knowing how to handle a cyber incident when it does occur. We can be as proactive as we want and it will warrant off a lot of breaches, but we must be realistic. At the rate of change and how quickly new vulnerabilities are cropping up on a daily basis, you must be prepared to handle them. If you have a plan, you can act quickly to identify, protect detect, respond, and recover with the least amount of impact. It is equally important to test your plan and update it as needed.

Is your business prepared for a cyber incident?