90% of small businesses underestimate the cost of cyberattacks
Cobwell, an insurance company specializing in cybersecurity and services for small and medium-sized businesses, recently released a report for 2023, containing data on the estimates that companies make about the costs of security. The survey showed that only 10% of companies were able to make a correct estimate of the costs related to the cyber attacks they suffered. For 90% of companies, the estimates turned out to be well below the actual costs.
The damage caused by a cyber attack can have a significant impact on the finances of a small company: it is in fact necessary to consider the costs of any legal actions and lost earnings, in addition to the reputational damage that can continue over time. Damage of this magnitude can destroy smaller companies, which do not have the necessary means to recover. Therefore it is essential that every company is aware of what the risks are and that it develops a specific strategy to counter cyber threats.
Corporate security solutions
The Cobwell report showed that companies that have taken out specific insurance to deal with cyber attacks, and the related damages, are satisfied with this investment. Having insurance allows you to reduce losses in the event of serious security problems; therefore, it is something that all companies should have. However, this is only a remedy, by itself it is not enough. Here are some tips on how to best protect your business.
- Develop a corporate security plan. The best solution is to contact security experts, figures capable of assessing the company's risks and drawing up a security plan to follow over time. These experts should also carry out periodic checks and updates of the plan, in order to take into account changes in the company and the world of security.
- Educate employees. However, a company's greatest vulnerability is its own employees. These cannot be controlled, as it is possible to do with a computer system, and it is for this reason that hackers exploit the human factor to carry out their attacks. It is therefore essential that employees know how to work safely. It can be helpful to advise, especially for employees who work from home, the use of a VPN. Just install it on your devices to encrypt traffic, including that directed to the corporate network. It can be quite easy to learn how a VPN works .
- Monitor the corporate network. If an outsider were able to get into the corporate network, he could do a lot of damage. For this it is necessary to monitor accesses, in order to identify unauthorized ones. With this in mind, it is helpful to create individual accounts for each employee, and ensure that secure passwords are used.
- Always keep company systems up to date . Very often, attacks are carried out by exploiting vulnerabilities present in operating systems. This method is particularly effective when systems are not updated to the latest version, as is sometimes the case in a corporate environment. Therefore, it is very important to ensure that all devices in use in the company have all the latest security updates.
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The article 90% of Small Businesses Underestimate the Cost of Cyber Attacks comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-90-delle-piccole-aziende-sottovaluta-il-costo-degli-attacchi-informatici/ on Sun, 04 Jun 2023 22:01:05 +0000.