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Costly Mistake #3: Belief that you are not a 'valuable target' for cybercrimes

by Yehuda Cagen 4. December 2009 08:56

 

I hate to beat a dead horse with the data security topic, but it's become increasingly clear that many small business executives feel that they're  too "small" or "insignificant" to be a target of cybercrime. As a result they don't take the proper steps to secure their organization's most critical asset.

Back in September, we published a report on the "Five Most Expensive Expensive Mistakes in Having Onsite Servers". (You can request a copy here.) The belief that you are not a 'valuable target' for cybercrimes was Costly Mistake #3 on our list. Here's an excerpt:

The U.S. Secret Service reported in September 2009 that, since larger corporations are pursuing data security with significant resources, cyber criminals are increasingly targeting more vulnerable small and medium-sized businesses.

"Smaller businesses often believe they're better protected than they really are, because they don't have experts to advise them on what else they should be doing,” said Steve Cole, president and CEO of the Council of  the Better Business Bureaus. As of mid-2009, there about a million new malicious programs created each month with the intent to steal information. Just as there is cost involved in protecting data, there is also a cost in not protecting it.

According to security leader Symantec, the risk of data loss increases in a bad economy. This is likely attributed with the unfortunate rise in the number of employees leaving their companies during the recent economic downturn - with a whopping 59% leaving with confidential corporate data (more on this topic in a later post).

The risk of data loss also increases when employees work from home - many times, on more vulnerable home office computers. Make sure your employees have secure remote access to corporate data whether they log in to your own infrastructure or through a managed servers.

 

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