Think Your Business is Too Small to be targeted by Cyber Criminals?
Your small business probably isn’t too concerned with cybersecurity and that is exactly why you are a target for ransomware attacks. Small businesses often have the impression that only the “big fish” companies are targets for ransomware, but the fact is those small businesses are ideal targets because they have little or no security measures in place. Small businesses most often fall well short of what would be best-practice security compliance, when maintaining their own IT infrastructure.
Statistically, over 70% of ransomware attacks targeted what would be considered a small business, and the average ransomware demand was over $100,000. According to a Sept 7, 2021 article in New York Magazine, a security firm that tracks ransomware attacks has estimated that there were over 65,000 successful security breaches in 2020 and the numbers for 2021 have only increased in number.
Ransomware attacks come primarily in two forms: locking users out of their IT hardware and systems and by encrypting their data. The latter form is the most common and by far the most damaging type of ransomware attack. If your data is encrypted, it can’t be accessed without an encryption key which the hacker may or may not provide you once the ransom is paid. Without your data unencrypted, your business will most likely grind to a halt, costing you significant lost time and revenue.
By far, the biggest threat to a small business is a “phishing attack”. Phishing attacks are getting more prevalent and more sophisticated. Hackers are using Social Engineering, researching their targets to provide much more compelling messages to trick your users and gain access to your systems.
Many small business owners believe that using cloud-based, or SaaS (Software as a Service) software is inherently more dangerous than hosting their own software. Research has found the opposite to be true. SaaS software leads to higher cybersecurity because software providers use robust security tools which most small businesses cannot afford. Therefore, self-hosted systems are often left more vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
Most people today are quite comfortable banking and paying bills online than they were 10 or 15 years ago. We are seeing the same trend in SaaS. A SaaS software provider that hosts its applications in a secure cloud environment, like Amazon’s Amazon Web Services (AWS), or Microsoft’s Azure Cloud, can provide the kind of security that would be cost-prohibitive for almost all small businesses.
Acumatica ERP is hosted in the Amazon (AWS) cloud, by far the market leader in cloud services. When hosted in the AWS cloud, Acumatica customers are provided a full array of cybersecurity services from disaster recovery, server redundancy, server software updates, monitoring, and tuning, as well as frequent backups. In 2020, Acumatica experienced ZERO ransomware attacks. Acumatica customers can be confident that their software is secure and always available, with a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that guarantees a 99.5% uptime.
For more information about how Acumatica can provide you with robust business applications with Enterprise-Class Security, contact us.