Many small business owners may go about their work as though they are impervious to any online threats their larger competitors may face for the simple reason that their companies appear to be too low-level to target. However, that kind of thinking can be extremely dangerous, as more crooks are now turning their attentions to hacking independent enterprises in particular.
Hackers who target bigger companies face something of a dilemma. On the one hand, they may be able to steal a massive amount of potentially lucrative personal or financial data in one fell swoop. On the other, though, those data stores are likely protected with an equally-massive amount of technological safeguards designed to keep people like them out. There is, in addition, probably a much greater risk of being caught. For that reason, the big reward may not be worth the hassle, especially because cracking those safety measures will probably take them a long time.
Instead, a greater number of hackers these days often turn to small businesses for their attacks. The simple fact is that most small companies cannot afford to put much in the way of safety measures in place, or might think that they’re not even going to be targeted with such an attack. In addition, even if they’re as vigilant as possible, they likely do not have even one dedicated IT professional on staff, and almost certainly don’t have the resources on hand to protect themselves as ably as larger firms might.
Another reason small businesses may not go to great lengths to protect themselves is that they don’t think they have enough information criminals would want, and that too is incorrect. Even one compromised record can net a crook thousands of dollars – depending upon the kind of information exposed and how it’s used – and thus can be extremely valuable. Add in the minimal effort likely needed to crack a smaller company’s system as opposed to a larger one, and the reward for a hacker is likely quite high. This is especially true because smaller companies often also go a long time before even discovering they’ve been hit with such an attack.
Unfortunately for owners, the cost of remediating a data breach often stretches into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on how much information is exposed. For this reason, a small business insurance policy like tech insurance may be a wise investment, because it can help cover otherwise significant costs.
