In the early stages of your business, cybersecurity can be one issue that is a long way from the front of your mind. You might have come to the business with a great new idea and you are anxious to get started and get it off the ground.
Starting a business is a real challenge, and it takes a considerable investment of both time and money to be successful. So with all of the startup costs mounting up and a thousand things that you will love to have extra money to spend on – why is it important to start thinking about your cybersecurity?
The truth, unfortunately, is that cybercriminals don’t tend to concern themselves with whether or not your business can afford high-quality cybersecurity. They are only interested in stealing the information, data, or money that your company has.
In this article, we will take a look at why it has become so important to safeguard your startup company with high-quality cybersecurity measures as early on in your business life cycle as possible.
Cybercrime is lethal to small businesses
If you are still in the camp that believes cybersecurity is something that you can’t afford, it is time to accept that there is something that your business really can’t afford, and that is to suffer a cybercrime attack. The fact is that while cybercrime is clearly a problem for businesses of all sizes, it can be especially damaging to new and smaller companies.
In fact, it has been reported that an astonishing 60% of small businesses that suffer a hack are closed within six months of the attack. This shows how important it is to put in place robust defenses.
Small businesses are more likely to be targeted
It is not just the scale of the damage that is the problem for small companies and startups. There is also the issue that cybercriminals disproportionately target small businesses. There are actually a number of reasons that this is the case, but for those small business owners who believe that their company is safe because hackers are more interested in big targets; it simply isn’t true.
In reality, small businesses are seen by cybercriminals as more likely to have low-quality (or no) cybersecurity in place. This makes them an easy target.
A task for the whole team
It is sometimes believed by smaller businesses that they can simply leave the job of cybersecurity to whoever is in charge of IT. But it is vital to realize that if employees don’t understand how to be secure, it doesn’t matter what kind of defenses your business puts in place – they won’t make a difference.
“Make sure every employee in your business understands information security, not just your security team,” says Ashleigh Farrand, Head of Service Operations at cybersecurity specialists Redscan “every individual in an organization plays a part in creating a mature security program. Even with the best security controls in place, a single click of a malicious link can lead to compromise.”
Outsourcing can save you money
Cybersecurity expertise is expensive. There is a cybersecurity skills shortage and while the gap is beginning to close, it is estimated that in 2022 there are more than 2.72 million cybersecurity positions that will go unfilled because of the skills gap. This drives up the cost of bringing in staff and is making it simply unaffordable for small companies.
But you shouldn’t panic. There are still plenty of options when it comes to finding ways to get cybersecurity skills into your company. It can be a good idea, for example, to work with experienced cybersecurity professionals that can provide outsourced services. Here an outside company can take care of all of your cybersecurity needs – this is typically far cheaper than trying to employ a cybersecurity team.
There can be no doubt avoiding spending on cybersecurity might feel like a great saving – right up until the second you’re hacked. Cybercrime continues to increase year on year and it becomes more likely all the time that your business could face an attack. Putting in the investment early can be an important way to save your business a lot of money – and it might even save the company if you were to suffer an attack early in your existence.
© YFS Magazine. All Rights Reserved. Copying prohibited. All material is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this material is prohibited. Sharing of this material under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International terms, listed here, is permitted.
In this article
