Because we hear about all the large scale security breaches in the news its easy to think that its a big guys problem. Unfortunately that is just not true and small businesses are getting hacked every day. Because small businesses are well… small, they do not loose the volume of identities and credit card numbers that the big guys loose, so its not news worthy. But small businesses loose much more, themselves. That is because typically a small business can not recover from cyber attacks as well as the big guys and can’t handle the investigation costs, legal fees, fines, and other costly consequences that go along with a breach. An estimated 60% of small businesses will go out of business within 6 months of suffering a successful cyber-attack.
Small businesses can’t afford large Security Operations Centers so instead they have to employ the best security practices as possible. They need to do their best to keep up with the basics such as staying on top of software patches, managing passwords properly, monitor their systems for intrusions, and maintain properly configured antivirus and antimalware.