In the modern digital age, every business operates online. Even with all the benefits that the online world offers, it’s still a very risky and dangerous place for businesses. The main reason is security threats and cyber attacks that can prove to be disastrous. Achieving business success means avoiding such risks and that’s why cyber security is so important for your business. As technology progresses, cyber attacks become more sophisticated and more common than ever.
What’s more, it’s no longer about the size or the wealth of the company that makes it a target. Any business, no matter how large or small, can easily become a target of a cyber attack. Moreover, the consequences of a successful cyber attack can range anywhere from financial issues and ruined reputation to complete business failure. Here are a few ways in which cyber security and your business are connected.
Business protection
As mentioned before, the consequences of a cyber attack can be dire. What’s more, cyber attacks target businesses regardless of their size. In fact, 43% of cyber attacks are focused on small businesses and startups. That being said, business owners need to consider cyber security as one of the primary business goals, instead of an issue that an IT department is responsible for. Cyber attacks aim to steal sensitive data, bring down a network or simply outright destroy a business.
Either way, if you don’t take cyber security seriously, you may easily go out of business soon enough. The fact of the matter is that 60% of small business never recover from a cyber attack. That fact alone is reason enough to protect your business adequately. Without proper cyber security measures in place, even a simple cyber attack can cause serious damage to your organization and its reputation.
Protecting the customers
Every business needs customers in order to function. In the online world, many businesses store some kind of information about their customers. The main reason is that information gathered about customers helps improve marketing campaigns and personalized promotions. That way, businesses can tailor their messages more efficiently and encourage repeat business from their customers.
What’s more, businesses, such as e-commerce stores, also oftentimes store sensitive information about customers, such as credit or debit card information, billing addresses and so on, in order to make the website purchasing process more seamless. However, this type of data attracts cyber criminals with intent to steal sensitive info and sell it off on a black market or use it with ill intent. That’s why it’s important to have strong cyber security, get familiar with GDPR and protect customer information from being misused. If customer data gets stolen, the reputation of that business will suffer and it may even lead to complete failure due to the lack of trust from the online consumers.
Preparing for the future
Technology had a major impact on both businesses and consumers ever since the Internet was made available for commercial use. Nowadays, technology is making more improvements and the online world is heading towards more connectivity and more devices being used. That being said, the number of connected devices and IoT (Internet of Things) will be well over 200 billion by 2020. In addition, it’s estimated that data volumes will be at least 50 times greater by the same year than they are today.
With all that in mind, the number of cyber threats and potential exploits will increase as well, alongside the number of cyber attacks. Having cyber security measures in place is a good way to protect your business from new threats and be prepared in advance. Cyber security can help a business make a more seamless transition into the new age and also adopt new technologies in a much safer way.
Risk management
Unfortunately, today, it’s not the question if the cyber attack will happen, but rather when it will happen. As a matter of fact, 55% of companies stated that they’ve experienced a cyber attack in past 12 months. In addition, the damage from cyber attacks is estimated to reach $6 trillion globally by 2021. The main role of cyber security isn’t just to prevent cyber attacks, but also to help businesses mitigate risk and have an effective damage control.
For instance, if the sensitive data isn’t stored on-site or if it isn’t easily available, chances are that a cyber attack will fail. Also, if there are adequate backup servers, businesses won’t experience any downtime while isolating an infected server. These are just examples of how cyber security can help mitigate the risk and improve risk management.
The connection between cyber security and your business is a base for business success, protection of customers and risk control. Without cyber security, businesses are at the risk of losing everything and not just falling behind.
