Having been in the game for years I’ve heard the same thing from countless business owners and other decision makers across a wide variety of industries.

• Enterprise grade networking gear is too expensive, we’ll think about it.
• MDR antivirus is too expensive, consumer grade antivirus or freeware is fine.
• I can’t justify the cost of spam/phishing email filters, I’m too small to be a target.
• It’s easier to use the same simple password across all my accounts; 2 Factor Authentication is annoying and not worth the hassle.
• I don’t have any backups but I’ve never needed them.

In essence it all boils down to the age old false belief “It won’t happen to me”.

And then it does happen. I’ve seen it. I’ve helped clean up the mess afterwards. And you know what? That becomes far more expensive! Not just in terms of the labour costs to remediate the situation IF it can even be remediated. But also in terms of lost sales during your downtime, stolen client/financial data, fraud, insane ran$omware demands, and even lawsuits from clients whose information has been compromised. The LifeLabs hack a few years back being a prime example (FYI some hacker probably knows my cholesterol is a little high 🤣 )…and the list goes on.

I’m sure virtually all of us have had something “happen to us” we never thought would. Learn from that experience! Be proactive not reactive with the computer networks that underpin your business and livelihood. The expense is justified and not unreasonable considering the alternative of doing nothing.

When the internet first began, originally a project of the US government called Arpanet, the governing philosophy was for it to be completely open. “Computer A” sends something to “Computer B” and it was accepted. Unfortunately as Arpanet grew into the Internet malicious actors came online and security became a necessity. As a result we’ve added on layer upon layer of security; Firewalls, passwords, encryption, user privileges, Antivirus, 2FA/MFA, VPNs, etc… but with all these security measures came added complexity, and unforeseen holes in that complexity have also become a source of vulnerability.

Malicious actors do target large players on purpose, but they also cast a wide net just to see what lands in it (Ex: Blasting out phishing emails to thousands of individuals from email lists they find on the Darkweb), and if they happen to catch you in their net, they will focus their energies on targeting you specifically.

Unfortunately there is no such things as “perfect security” otherwise discussions of this nature would not be necessary and the cybersecurity industry would cease to exist, there are however many common sense things you can do now that will minimize the chances of something catastrophic happening later and that’s why having your business IT managed properly is so vitally important.

There is a balance that must be struck between security and usability. There are a range of security products available that can be tailored to your needs.

Doing nothing shouldn’t be a consideration