Cybersecurity is turning out to be a top priority for organizations in every sphere. The reason being that cybercrime is costing businesses around the globe billions of dollars each year.
According to IBM, the average cost of a data breach is $4.24million as of 2021, up from $3.86million in 2020. With cyberattack stories becoming a common feature of news headlines globally, companies cannot ignore the risks they face and whether they’re doing enough to protect themselves.
Why? Cyber gangs have evolved. They aren’t only interested in the so-called ‘big corporations.’ Small businesses are also falling on the receiving end of cyber-attacks, not because the cybercriminals are interested in compensation, but because small businesses hold data that can lead to a bigger catch.
Any way you look at it, your business, big, small, new, or old, possesses something that may aid cybercriminals in their course—the more reason why cybersecurity is critical in every business.
For many companies, embracing some form of cybersecurity is preparing or dealing with a growing concern of sophisticated cyber-crime.
This post will guide you through the right approach to adopt cybersecurity as a cost of running your business.
Conducting Threat Assessment
Your cybersecurity cost should be based on the level and types of threats you are exposed to, face or project.
As organizations give their teams the liberty to work remotely, organizations are more vulnerable than before. As such, it’s as important as ever to conduct a comprehensive threat analysis for your organization— following best practice guidelines—and decide on a cybersecurity budget.
Threat assessment also helps to validate your cybersecurity budget over time as threats evolve.
Educating and Training Users
Innovative business leaders understand the importance of constant cybersecurity and insider threats education. While your team members may not intentionally act maliciously, research shows that they’re the weak link to exposing company data to risk.
Aside from your core cybersecurity talent pool, your entire team must be well-educated on cybersecurity’s significance and best practices.
This calls for organizational investment in employee’s career and skills development if they want to maintain a high level of security.
Organize workshops, seminars, etc., to train everyone through simulated exercises, so they develop skepticism plus the ability to spot threats and readily report any suspicious activity.
Well-trained employees are essential to the success of any cybersecurity strategy.
Preparing for Incident Response
Prevention and remediation measures are two different expenses that most organizations get mixed up. Enterprises need to acknowledge that these are distinct departments that work together to get threats out the door.
However, spending generously on prevention and forgetting incident response can wreck your remediation journey when calamity strikes.
To be safe, organizations must also set aside risk tolerance funds for remediation processes based on the assessment of expected incidents.
Upgrading and Replacing your Infrastructure
Today’s technology is fast-paced, ever-evolving, and driven by innovation. As a result, software, tools, and hardware possess a short life cycle often sustained by ongoing updates, releases, and upgrades.
Over time, such technology becomes unsupported and outdated, putting your organization at risk of cyber-attacks.
This is to say that enterprises must regularly check and replace obsolete systems or face security risks due to human negligence, malice, or system failure.
Security-as-a-Service
Security-as-a-Service is a worthwhile undertaking that can keep your organization ahead of security threats. Even with in-house experts, it’s not uncommon to see large organizations outsource or rely on third parties on SaaS.
Consultants bring innovative ideas and deep industry knowledge to help test and secure your business. They help identify gaps and formulate, cocreate or improve security practices and processes.
Also, due to the complexity of cybersecurity, it becomes wise to use outside help and let your team focus on core business operations.
Outsourcing helps organizations leverage large pools of minds while limiting overhead costs, reducing risks, and getting access to proprietary security technologies such as DaaS, app and server hosting, disaster recovery and backup plans, and more.
Preparing for the Worst
An organization always needs to understand that risk assessment is critical regardless of how strong its defenses are. Risks change every minute, which requires your organization to adapt, adjust and prepare for new threats.
This means that your cyber security budget needs regular review and will most likely increase. Realistically, you can’t base your current cybersecurity budget on last year’s threats.
Cyber Insurance
Could you afford to pay out fines and restore normalcy if your businesses suffered a devastating cyber-attack? If not, cybersecurity insurance is worth your consideration.
Cyber insurance helps mitigate expensive losses while mitigating for your business the negative impact of data breaches, downtime, infrastructure damage depending on coverage. Notably, cybersecurity insurance should be a backup to a solid cybersecurity strategy.
Don’t wait until calamity strikes to put thought into protecting your organization.
With a rising number of cyber-attacks and an ever-widening regulatory landscape demanding stricter data protection requirements, organizations need to integrate cybersecurity in their operating costs to mitigate the risk of threats.
With these tips and a reliable security partner, you’ll be well on your way to protecting your business from threats.
To learn more about how you can protect your company from cyber-attack, please call
888-753-5060