The “Small Business and Cyber Crisis” Issue

You can solve the “small business and cyber crisis” issue by the mean of strategic cyber planning.

Starting a business is challenging and surviving in the market seems to be even harder, which in turn, requires us to increase our knowledge in cyber crises. Right after launching your small or medium-sized business, you are likely to be a potential target for more than 80 percent of cyber-attacks. Cyber challenges are only one of the struggles that SMBs have to deal with. It is also important to manage your budget, hire intelligently and manage your business strategies. Developing a business challenges your management skills. Management is to put every piece of your business puzzle into the right place, not to do everything on your own.

When it comes to small business and cyber crisis, the analysts point out that those managers who do apportioning duties more innovatively can deal better with the cyber crisis. Therefore, it can be claimed that SMB managers need to stay productive to defeat black hat hackers. If you are planning to set up a small business, you should always consider “small business and cyber crisis” as an issue that if remained unsolved, can threaten your business.

You need to do strategic cyber planning to solve small business and cyber crisis issues. Despite all the threats that SMBs may have to encounter, they don’t have access to any major certified method to do strategic cyber planning. The fact is SMB owners and cybersecurity activists have not pulled their weight to save startups. As a result, around 60% of small businesses collapse within 6 months of a cyberattack.

Perusing a strategic cyber plan, let us investigate all aspects of a business independently to reach operational efficiency. That can also help you to grow and find more reputable investors. Having a strategic cyber plan helps you change your mindset. Do you fight to succeed instead of planning to survive? That could be possible if you do strategic cyber planning. A strategic cyber plan allows you to set higher limits.

As a small business, your cyber plan needs to include special strategies that work for SMBs. SMBs cannot be identified by their employees’ count, whereas the company’s structure is what can explain SMBs’ concepts.

However, to simplify the criteria in this article, we have considered companies with fewer than 500 employees as SMBs. Let’s investigate how small business and cyber crisis issues occur.

Why can’t SMBs set proper strategies to solve “small business and cyber crisis” issues?

Misconceptions about SMBs’ cybersecurity issues prevent business owners from considering real-world problems. Ignoring the facts is the main obstacle that causes SMBs to fail to set a proper strategy. Let’s survey these facts before delving into SMBs’ cybersecurity strategies.

How do misconceptions come upon?

Whether we like it or not, media has a tremendous impact on our thoughts. Due to the fact that mass media only covers news related to massive and devastating corporate or governmental data breaches, SMB owners may assume that they are not in danger. On the other hand, some blogs threaten SMB by creating fake statistics to prove that the issue of small business and cyber crisis is so huge that SMBs can’t handle it (unless they get help from their company).

The truth demonstrates that SMBs face about the same level of a security crisis as their larger counterparts. But Lack of crowdsourced cybersecurity protection turns SMBs into easy targets; so easy that 6 out of 10 small businesses are out of business within six months of a cyber-attack.

The statistics demonstrate that 50% of SMBs had to manage public scrutiny from a security breach, while such figures for large businesses may reach 51%.

Disclose your data breach

Another misconception about small businesses and cyber crisis may force small businesses to go underground. To be honest, disclosing the fact that you have been defeated by black-hat hackers would harm your reputation. But what can lead your business to disaster is going underground and trying to keep the data breach a secret.

Breeches would become public at some point for sure, and if you are the one who admits your weakness, the media will do that for you in an exaggerated and scary way. That is when a disaster occurs and you would lose all your reputation.

59% of small businesses that have been able to survive and grow were the ones that disclosed their most significant data breach at some point. Disclosing your weakness suggests that you respect your customers and partners.

SMBs do not face different threats than larger businesses

Do not assume that because you do not have a large business, you are not going to face serious threats. Given the differences in the infrastructure of small and large businesses, the form of threats against them will certainly be different. This does not mean that the threats made are not dangerous. Cyber-attacks costs inflicted on SMBs reach more than $6 trillion annually, which demonstrates that how dangerous cyber threats can be.

 

 

If the SMB’s owner does not take a small business and cyber crisis issue seriously, they would be in danger of losing all the wealth they have, not only their business.

For both SMBs and large enterprises, ransomware was the most likely threat to cause more than 24 hours of system downtime.

While phishing can have a devastating effect on SMBs, larger businesses know how to deal with it and reduce its impacts. On the other hand, there are DDoS attacks that can have a huge impact on large business infrastructure, while they rarely can cause serious damages to SMBs’ structure. Wiper malware can threaten both SMBs and large businesses. The least damage that wiper malware can create is downing the business servers as long as 17 hours.

Your competitors are not underdeveloped

When it comes to business, nothing is as risky as underestimating your competitors. Especially if the competition fever distracts you from the right investment goals or if you set your standards based on competition standards that you have underestimated. What is your idea about your competitors’ strength in handling the “small business and cyber crisis” issue?

 You may assume that large businesses have more updated infrastructures. In fact, 42% of SMBs have very updated infrastructure and 52% of them update their infrastructure regularly. Assuming that way can put you behind 94% of your competitors.

72% of SMBs have employees dedicated to threat hunting. Only one percent of SMBs never test their plan, and four percent of them rarely do the tests. Twelve percent of SMBs test their infrastructure every two years, 36% do the tests annually, and the largest percentage (45%) test every 6 months. Based on these facts, we can strongly admit that SMBs are not underdeveloped. The importance of cyber crisis has become clear for SMB owners, and that can ignite the fever of competing among SMBs.

SMBs can experience fast recovery

When it comes to small businesses and cyber crises, statistics may make people think that small businesses suffer more downtime. However, the truth is that those SMBs that stay recoverable after an attack can recover faster than the larger business.

Statics demonstrate that 74% of SMBs that stay recoverable after attacks can recover in less than eight hours, while only 68% of a larger business can do the recovery in less than eight hours. 3 years ago, only 40% of recoverable SMBs could do the recovery in less than 8 hours, which reveals the SMBs’ growth. As a business owner, you have to do strategic planning intelligently.

1. Try to fill any possible security gap that makes you an easy target for hackers.
2. Build your business infrastructure that keeps your business recoverable in case an attack occurs.

Lack of an updated infrastructure can turn an SMB into the weak link of the cybersecurity chain. Without updated hardware and software, you should not expect to experience instant recovery. But there is no obligation to throw all your software and hardware away, and replace them with the latest available tools. SMB owners can just seek help from crowdsourced cybersecurity platforms. Crowdsourced security researchers can bring enough flexibility to your infrastructure to cope with the change.

Facts regarding small business and cyber crisis issue that simplify cyber planning

Now that you have a clear idea about the SMB’s position in the cyber world, it’s time to start doing strategic cyber planning. Regardless of your company size and business field, there are tips that should be included in your cyber plan.

Be the one who can be trusted

Even if you solve the “small business and cyber crisis” issue, you will not succeed if you do not win the trust of the customers. Based on facts and statistics, we can claim that the customers only care that their data remains private no matter who has it. But just claiming that your data is under our protection, may not be enough to convince customers. Building trust should be considered an important step while strategic planning.

There are several ways to do so. One important way is getting help from those who are reputable in your business field. There are reputable companies that help startups develop. You can ask them to help you do your branding, marketing, web development, etc. Then you can mention that your website or your branding strategies are powered by that company. Thus, customers will trust you because you collaborate with trusted ones.

You can also seek help from crowdsourced cybersecurity platforms and let your customers know that you have an integrated plan to keep their data protected. That is the best way to build trust. By having crowdsourced cybersecurity platforms’ researchers by your side, you not only build the trust but you get secured.

Gain proactive insight to solve the “small business and cyber crisis” issue

As Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Gaining proactive insight into small business and cyber crisis issue, prevent cyber-attacks from happening. Bug bounty, pen-testing, and threat hunting are proactive security solutions that can be used to solve small business and cyber crisis issues. SMBs need to start investigating and responding before detecting potentially malicious activity. That may seem in contrast with what people may think about security problems, but there is no way to defeat black hat hackers except by gaining proactive insight.

 

Follow Goal-setting theory to examine your solution of solving the “small business and cyber crisis” issue

Before beginning cyber planning, companies’ strategies should be determined. The simplest way to determine your company’s strategies is by following the Goal-setting Theory. Strategies are nothing but the innovative solutions that you find to achieve your goals. Therefore, SMB owners need to be clear about their goals before beginning cyber planning.

On the other hand, SMBs should have a checklist of their goals. The efficiency of a cyber-plan should be measured regularly through checking achievements. Why? Because you can’t fix what you can’t measure. 86% of SMBs claim that they have clear metrics for assessing the effectiveness of their strategies. Your achievements are the criteria of your success in handling the “small business and cyber crisis” issue.

How to understand if your strategies are working?

SMBs cannot handle “small business and cyber crisis” if their strategic cyber plan does not go well.  Some indications inform us about the cyber plan inefficiency. Cybersecurity fatigue is the main important indication.

 Based on the aforementioned facts, the attention of SMBs to the “small business and cyber crisis” issue is much more than it seems. But 43% of data breaches are still from small businesses. This demonstrates that SMB owners have some serious problems with strategic cyber planning.

The statistics indicate that despite the importance of cybersecurity in SMB’s initial plan, they give up on staying ahead of malicious threat actors along the way of developing. This phenomenon is what we know as Cybersecurity fatigue.

The only way to prevent Cybersecurity fatigue is to do strategic cyber planning. Cybersecurity fatigue can make you fail in the challenge posed by “small business and cyber crisis “.

What hampers SMBs in solving the “small business and cyber crisis” issue by strategic cyber planning?

When one is intelligent enough to start a small business, they understand that they need to have a strategic plan to survive. They know that the only way to solve the small business and cyber crisis issue is to have a strategic plan. But there are some obstacles that any business owner may face when doing strategic planning. Lack of trained personnel is the biggest obstacle they may come across.

SMB owners are aware of cybersecurity importance, whereas 90% of IT decision-makers within SMBs cannot handle the small business and cyber crisis issue. Also, 91% of IT decision-makers in larger companies cannot cope with cyber crises, though there is an important difference. Larger companies take this fact seriously, while some SMBs try to ignore it, despite being aware of its importance.

At SecureBug we have invented a security model that simplifies the security solutions while making them more effective. We use a pay-per-vulnerability approach to proactive pen testing, designed to maximize the discovery of high-impact vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, implementing No-Cure, No-Pay Model reduces the cost of cybersecurity services, rendering them affordable for small businesses.

SecureBug’s crowdsourcing platform helps you assess your security team’s ability to detect and respond to an active attack scenario. Providing cybersecurity is similar to playing chess. It is not enough to merely know about the rules. You also need to have a strategy to win the game.

As the king of white pieces, Securebug prepares the playing board, equips its soldiers, and provides all the key pieces with the desired strategies. We challenge those black hats who threaten the business.

Our Advanced skills assessment connect the right security skills to the right project. We provide the users of our service with non-stop visibility into testing activity through the SecureBug platform enabling them to track progress through discovery testing, retesting phases of a pen test.