The first thing that comes to our minds when we think about cybersecurity attacks is that they target large enterprises. Unfortunately, that is not true. In fact, 43% of cybersecurity attacks target small businesses. According to a cost of data breach report, small businesses pay a much higher price of data breaches as compared to large scale enterprises. Small and medium-sized businesses can be a lucrative target for cyber criminals as they have fewer resources and little to no in-house expertise to execute a cyber security incident response plan even if they have one.

The worst part, most small businesses do not have an incident response plan. So, how can an emerging business protect itself from these costly cyber attacks? That is exactly what we will discuss in this article.

In this article, you will learn about how growing businesses can handle cybersecurity challenges.

1. Phishing Detection and Remediation

One of the most common types of cybersecurity attacks targeting small businesses is phishing attacks. If you want to protect your business from these phishing attacks, you must invest in a piece of security information and event management platform. Choose a SIEM platform that offers you built-in phishing detection and remediation capabilities. This will go a long way in making sure that your employees stay safe especially when communicating on communication channels. 

You can minimize the risk of phishing attacks by increasing employee awareness through cybersecurity training. This way, hackers will not be able to track their employees into sharing their sensitive information with them. The more aware your employees are about phishing attacks, the less likely they are to fall victim to such attacks. 

Restrict employees from sharing their sensitive information online. Tell them to check every link through a link checking tool before they click on it. This will save them from clicking on malicious links that point to malicious websites that could infect their computers.

2. Be vary of Insider Threats

According to insider threat statistics, More than one-third of businesses around the world are affected by insider threats every year. Insider threats cost businesses $2.79 million. 66% of businesses consider malicious insider attacks and accidental data breaches more likely than external attacks. What is even worse is that the number of insider attacks has increased by 47% in the last two years. 70% of insider threats are not even reported externally and are handled internally due to the risk of reputation damage.

 Add to that the number of employees working remotely right now and it becomes a serious problem for businesses. Cybercriminals target employees, contractors, suppliers, vendors as well as privilege accounts to coordinate these types of attacks. To identify and curb insider threats, you should have a user behavior analytics system in place. This will help you to understand the risks linked to the suspicious activity of different users on your organization’s network.

3. Nullify Ransomware Attacks

Ransomware attacks are not only growing in numbers, but they are also becoming more and more sophisticated with each passing day. Their focus has shifted from businesses to critical infrastructures such as a power plant or traffic control systems but that does not mean that businesses can relax. Thanks to its low cost, high profitability nature, hackers can easily launch hundreds of these attacks with minimal effort and cost. 

According to Cisco, it is the top cybersecurity threat that is most likely to cause a 24  hours outage and if you operate in a time-sensitive industry such as E-commerce, you can not afford an outage like this. In an industry like E-commerce, an hour-long outage could cost you hundreds and thousands of dollars in lost revenue. You can imagine how much a 24-hour long outage could cost your business. 

Small and medium-sized businesses must back up their data so they can easily restore it, even if they must buy dedicated server or more storage for it. Otherwise, they will have to pay a huge ransom and still be unsure whether they will get access to their data back or not. It is better to stay safe than sorry. Look for ransomware detection and mitigation features when choosing a threat management system.

4. Use Artificial Intelligence

Talent shortfall is one of the biggest challenges in the cyber-security industry. Millions of new jobs will be created but there is not enough talent to fill those positions. Organizations can fill that gap by using artificial intelligence and automation in their cybersecurity. Platforms like IBM can significantly boost the knowledge available to cyber-security professionals and help them make the right decisions.

Additionally, AI can also help businesses in developing a better understanding of cybersecurity patterns and malware through data analysis. By having the ability to separate real threats from fake ones, cybersecurity analysts can spend less time in the investigation of threats and more time in preventing cybersecurity attacks and data breaches that can derail their business. Moreover, it also helps you in taking action immediately thus, minimizing the damage from cybersecurity attacks.

5. Threat Detection and Response

Just like managed cloud services, there are also managed security service providers. Small and medium-sized businesses can hire these managed security service providers especially if they do not have the capacity to deal with cybersecurity challenges. They can do a great job when it comes to threat detection, investigation, and response primarily because they focus on these areas and have the resources and infrastructure to manage it efficiently.

Since these managed security service providers use advanced frameworks, this allows them to help small and mid-sized businesses in accessing, implementing, and growing their cybersecurity posture by using a common language for knowledge sharing about threat actors and the tactics they use to target your business. Small businesses can benefit from their state of the art security operations processes and architecture. This also enables small businesses to safely transform their business without worrying about issues and hurdles associated with digital transformation. 

How do you handle cybersecurity challenges as a business? Let us know in the comments section below.