I recently came across the 2014 Annual Report from the National Small Business Association (NSBA) -- and that report was the source of this rather shocking statistic. While there’s no denying that cybercrime has become much more prevalent recently, it’s astounding that half of all businesses responding to the NSBA survey reported being the victim of a cyberattack.
The report goes on to detail the costs of dealing with such attacks, which have skyrocketed to an average $20,752 per attack, up from “only” $8,699 reported two years ago. Respondents also said that resolving an attack was taking longer, with a third reporting a resolution time of three days or more.
When I do a quick comparison of our clients, the experience of those in the NSBA survey is far, far worse in the percent of businesses affected, as well as the cost of dealing with an attack and the time to resolve it. Some of that is good fortune… to a degree, security is a numbers game. The bad guys only have to succeed once and they’re generally casting thousands, if not millions, of attacks.
But I also know we’re doing a lot right on behalf of our clients... encouraging and educating about safe computing, implementing stronger firewalls, establishing layered and managed malware protection – and providing the kinds of backup and business continuity systems that make it easier, faster and cheaper to recover from an cyberattack, should one be successful.
If you’re concerned about the state of your cybersecurity, let us know. We can help you avoid becoming one of these ugly statistics.
