Why is it that many businesses still fail to see digital security as a priority, despite regular stories in the press about high profile hacking cases where both customer data and internal communications have been leaked or ransomed?
Smaller companies may not appreciate the need for a focus on security, because they don’t see why hackers would target them. However, while major breaches like those at Sony Entertainment or Adobe may be the ones that make the headlines, smaller companies are targeted on a daily basis and the effects can be crippling.
If a small or medium-sized firm has the details of all their customers stolen, and hackers use that information to target their customers for further attacks on their businesses, then that may be enough for customers and investors to lose confidence and send the firm under. Small firms have less of a financial cushion to rely on when these breaches happen, so while large corporate hacks may make the headlines, the attacks on small firms often have a greater effect on the business.
There are no excuses for any company failing to keep its software up-to-date with the security patches and with the latest antivirus definitions installed. However, these steps should serve as a basic starting point for all systems, with companies needing to go the extra mile to keep their data and customer information safe.
The regulations imposed on firms by governments provide a basic checklist to the minimum requirements needed to keep data more secure, but again this should be a baseline from which better security policies and practices can be implemented. Compliance is important, but customers only care about is whether their data was stolen, and that is why companies need to implement better security solutions, such as outlined in this security eBook PDF.
Historically, IT security has a reputation of inhibiting the flow of a business, making employees jump through extra hoops that makes a company less agile. Yet, modern security solutions from Dell and others do a very good job at staying out of the way once they are properly set up. Even if a company requires end-to-end encryption between devices, modern security solutions are flexible enough to make this possible with little fuss to the employees.
Photograph by Bill Burris