Growing Businesses: Check Your Security to Crush Cybercrime

Owning a business or working in a cybersecurity team has become even more difficult as hackers use constantly evolving technologies and methods to threaten businesses.

But, companies CAN protect themselves against these threats. We’ll go over the significance of cybersecurity in a world of cybercrime and some key things businesses should keep in mind to protect their growth.

First, it’s essential to understand the extent of cybercrime in today’s day and age. According to the 2022 Cybersecurity almanac from Cybersecurity Ventures, cybercrime was estimated to have caused $6 trillion USD in damages globally last year.

This number is up from the $3 trillion USD in 2015, and according to Cybersecurity Ventures, the global cybercrime costs are expected to increase by 15% annually over the next five years, reaching $10.5 trillion USD annually by 2025.

Cybersecurity Ventures also states that “cybercrimes are vastly undercounted because they aren’t reported — due to embarrassment, fear of reputational harm, and the notion that law enforcement can’t help”.

Furthermore, the KPMG 2021 CEO Outlook report says that only 58% of organizations declare being “well-prepared for a cyber attack.” Nevertheless, the focus on cybersecurity is present and growing.

According to KPMG’s report, there is a three-way tie (supply chain, cybersecurity, and climate change) for threats to growth depending on the business sector. The primary sectors that focus on cybersecurity according to CEOs are the tech sector (31%), telecoms (32%), and banking (17%).

Despite this, only 12% of boards of directors have dedicated board-level cybersecurity committees. As we mentioned, this is growing, as according to Gartner “by 2025, 40% of boards of directors will have a dedicated cybersecurity committee overseen by a qualified board member”.

The real question to answer is how can companies protect themselves? According to the cybersecurity provider Pango Group, these are 5 key things that every company needs to know.

1. Focus on your employees: They’re the first line of defense and must be trained to know what to look for, what attachments and links to steer clear of, how to protect their data, and recognize and report potential cyber-attacks
2. Recognize it’s not if, but when: Make sure to keep your cybersecurity tools up-to-date and establish an incident response plan
3. ID fraud is critical: identity theft protection and training will help protect your business
4. Social engineering & phishing are top threat vectors: Hackers trick users to provide information, and personnel must be aware of the various threats and methods that hackers use consistently (SMS, email, etc.)
5. Less is more: Access to essential data should be restricted to as few employees as possible

Now you can make sure that your business has everything it needs to continue growing safely and avoid those cyber-attacks!