With the influx of ransomware in the news and the big businesses that have been attacked by these threats, you might be thinking that will never happen to your small to medium sized business. But guess again. Cyberthieves are increasingly targeting their attacks to smaller organizations. They target the “little guys” for a couple of reasons.

SMBs Pay UP

Yup, smaller businesses that don’t have any other means to retrieve their data have a higher percentage that pays when the ransom comes due. SMBs sometimes don’t have proper data backups, and if the payment is small enough, it is the most cost effective way for them to deal with the issue. These little ransom amounts can be $300 to $2,000, but they are amounts that SMBs can afford. While it might not be the big payday they could get from targeting a large business, hackers know they will most likely get money from smaller firms, and if hackers target a significant amount of smaller companies, they might end up with a bigger payday anyway.

SMBs Don’t Have the Protection or Staff Training

With a small business, their budgets are also smaller, and they don’t spend the money on the software, or security training for their employees that they should. Without these things, it is much easier for a hacker to gain access to a network or trick an employee into clicking on something they shouldn’t have clicked on. With this easy access, it also makes SMBs the perfect target! In a study from IBM X-Force, 54% of consumers said they would pay a ransom to retrieve their financial data, and 55% of parents stated that they would pay to have their digital photos returned. With this willingness to pay up, it is no wonder hackers are targeting the little guys.

The lesson of the story is that no matter what size you are, your data, pictures, files, etc. is valuable to you in some way. You need to take steps to protect it and train your employees on how to do the same. Make sure backups are running and aren’t compromised. Get that anti-virus on all the workstations in your office. Submit your employees to some awareness training. After software, education is the most important countermeasure to avoid your system’s compromise.

Contact Networks Unlimited to see how we can help protect and train your business (970) 243-3311 / sales@networksunlimited.com.

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