Improve your business' Cybersecurity and decrease your vulnerability

Small Biz Matters – a half hour program each week where you can work ON your business rather than IN it.
with Alexi Boyd from Boyd Office Management Services
Date: 26 February 2019

What strikes a fear into small business owners greater than unpaid invoices, staffing issues or dodgy suppliers? Its cybersecurity. But the reality is very few, if any small business owners have a strategy in place to prevent cyber attacks nor a process to deal with it when it strikes. It’s a little bit of “It won’t happen to Me” and a little bit of “I don’t know where to Start”.

The fact is most small businesses often don’t know what to expect when we are experiencing a Cyber Attack let alone how to deal with it. And a Management IT Consultant (whom we should all have in our arsenal of advisor consultants) is considered a luxury for most of us.

And yet we are all vulnerable. 

Well, today’s guest should be able to shed some light on what to expect, how to deal with it and how to start protecting your business NOW is Steve Moros, the Director of Security, Cisco ANZ.

Welcome to the show Steve.

Topics we’ll be covering:

• The business impact of security threats to SMBs in Australia
  • Some statistics of the last few years and what’s the likelihood on a cybersecurity attack on a typical small business?
  • What do these attackers want & what sort of disruption can a business expect when it occurs?
• The biggest security threats that SMBs currently face
  • Why is it the biggest security threat when compared to theft or business destruction?
  • How do attackers present themselves?
  • When does a business owner know when they are “under siege” (it’s not always evident immediately)
• Simple things that SMBs can do to make incremental changes in their security posture
  • Will these changes cost a lot of money?
  • Do SMBs need to engage with a good IT Management Consultant who really knows their business?
  • Do you recommend the 3-2-1 backup rule?
  • How much are SMBs willing to spend to improve their security? Or should we be asking what’s it going to cost the business owner NOT to have anything in place?
• How SMB owners can educate their employees to prevent them from being a security risk
  • What do we typically see happen when an error from an employee leads to an attack?
  • What courses are available to small business owners & their employees?
  • How does CISCO help the small business community here?
  • Should business owners ALSO be protecting themselves in terms of cybersecurity from internal attack, the threat from their own staff?

The data breaches making headlines are mostly those that are launched against large enterprises, but this doesn’t mean smaller companies are immune. SMBs are also very vulnerable and have increasingly become the focus of attacks; often being viewed as soft targets because of their less-sophisticated security infrastructure and lack of access toIT resource.

Cisco’s recent Cyber Security Benchmark Study for SMBs reiterates this point. The report shows that 53 per cent of SMBs globally (including Australia) have experienced a breach, with 20 per cent saying that breaches have costed them more than $1M in economic loss. 40 per cent have experienced more than eight hours of system downtime due to a severe security breach. These numbers are enough to put an unprepared SMB out of operation — permanently.

Small businesses can avoid being a victim of a cyber-attack by putting some simple and effective measures in place to prevent breaches.

To find out more go to their website: https://www.cisco.com/c/en_au/solutions/small-business.htm