Posted by Tim Luzadder, TCC Enterprise Infrastructure Director
More than 60% of small businesses experienced a cybercrime of some type in 2017. That was a 6 percent increase from the year before and data breaches were up 4 percent according to the Ponemon Institute report 2017 State of Cybersecurity in Small & Medium-Sized Businesses (SMB). The US government recognizes the potential impact and is enforcing standards, like NIST SP 800-171, for defense contractors and subcontractors which handle certain types of data. These recommendations and standards address a particular industry, but the hazards are evolving constantly and threaten every bit of technology out there, not just computers, but servers, network devices, security cameras, even office refrigerators and environmental systems if they are connected to the internet.
Ransomware and phishing attacks are fairly well known, but still cost businesses and government agencies millions each year that many can’t afford. 60 percent of small business go out of business within six months of an attack and 90 percent of companies don’t use any data protection at all for company and customer information according to the Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report. A sheriff’s office in Maine, a department of Atlanta’s city government, a non-profit in Muncie, Equifax, all have been victimized by criminals chasing dollars – either to ransom or steal data to sell.
In the next blog post, I will make some recommendations for protecting your business from cybercrime.
To learn more about TCC’s IT Managed Services please visit our website https://e-tcc.com/managed-services.
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