You’d have to be living under a rock somewhere to not be aware that cyberattacks are affecting businesses both small and large, nonprofit organizations, and all kinds of government entities. Cyberattacks are keeping 911 and first responders unable to respond to emergencies. Cyberattacks have shut down hospitals and clinics here in Omaha as well as across the country. Ransomware attacks have prevented Omaha area nonprofits from fulfilling their missions. These cybercriminals have shut down small and medium sized businesses across Nebraska and cost them tens of thousands of dollars in revenue, soiled their reputations, and published customer and patient information to the dark web.
Businesses have been put into situations where they cannot meet that week’s payroll because funds were wired out of their accounts and across the world, never to be recovered. Omaha area construction companies have lost business to a competitor, not because the competitor was better, but because the cyberattack kept them from getting the bid submitted by the deadline.
Imagine spending a day “preparing” for a colonoscopy, only to arrive at your appointment and be told that a cyberattack took down the clinic’s scheduling system and you would need to reschedule your appointment for the following week.
These are all real-life examples of the impact of cyberattacks. No business or organization is safe from cyberattacks. Experts say that it isn’t a matter of IF you will have a cyberattack, but when you will have a cyberattack.
However, there are ways to reduce your exposure to cyberattacks, to mitigate the risk of cyberattacks, and to share the costs of cyberattacks if you are the victim of one or more.
How you can reduce your exposure:
- Have a strong password policy for your employees that uses complex passwords and requires that they regularly be changed.
- Use multifactor authentication to log into systems such as email, financial and banking systems, and where customer or patient records are stored.
- User training is important because almost all cyberattacks involve a human element to some degree.
- Install a complete suite of cybersecurity tools on your systems.
How you can mitigate your risk:
- Data backup solutions that allow you to restore your systems to a known safe point will allow you to restore your data from a point prior to it being encrypted by ransomware.
- Have in place processes and procedures that prevent a single person or system from initiating or completing transactions without separate approval.
How you can share the costs:
- Cyber insurance policies have existed for a while and can help recover losses. The premiums and requirements for these policies have and will continue to increase as cyberattacks increase. Having the basic cybersecurity tools in place will help you get a policy and can help keep premiums lower.
The time to fight cybercrime is before you become a victim. If you wait until you are aware of an attack, it may be too late for your business or organization to recover.
Contact Turner Technology www.theturnerway.com/contactus and let us help you take a bite out of cybercrime.
