Recent cyber attacks on M&S, Co-op and Harrods show that even big businesses with massive IT budgets remain vulnerable to cyber criminals. With online ordering offline and customer data stolen or encrypted and held to ransom, the impact to their businesses is substantial.
While large businesses with their technical and financial resources, and brand awareness will usually recover from cyber incidents, SMEs face a far greater risk of lasting damage. If your business experienced a similar attack, would it survive?
Key Takeaways for SMEs
You Are a Target – Size does not matter against cyber threats and assuming you’re too small to be targeted isn’t a defence. Often you aren’t targeted specifically, with cyber criminals taking a scatter gun approach.
Traditional Antivirus Isn’t Enough Anymore – we’re seeing a move in the industry from antivirus to eXtended Detection and Response (XDR) and Managed Detection and Response (MDR). XDR and integrating multiple security tools for better visibility and MDR providing proactive threat hunting and experts ready to take action.
Know Your Weaknesses – Implement vulnerability management to continuously know your weaknesses and be able to identify, patch and secure them before they are compromised and used against you in an attack.
Layered Security is Key – Implement a layered approach to security, utilise firewalls, antivirus, DNS filtering, phishing simulations, anti-spam, MFA, vulnerability management, penetration testing and continuous monitoring.
Train Your “Human Firewall” – Employees are often the weakest link in cyber security. Educate your staff so they are able to identify phishing attacks, fake links, social engineering and suspicious behaviour.
Backup Like Your Business Depends on It – Have a robust backup scheme in place, preferably offline, test them regularly to verify their integrity, and have a plan in place, ready for when you need to use them.
Have a Cyber Incident Response plan – If you do become a victim of a cyber incident, what do you do, who do you call, how do you communicate (with staff and customers). Having a well thought out, documented and well-known (internally) cyber incident response plan could mean the difference between your business surviving or not.
How Kriston Technology can help
At Kriston Technology cyber security is at the heart of all our services. The risks are too great for it not to be, which is why we provide our SME customers with comprehensive cyber security solutions including:
✅ Cyber security assessment
✅ Antivirus/XDR/MDR deployment
✅ DNS Filtering
✅ Email Protection
✅ Managed firewalls
✅ Vulnerability management
✅ Penetration Testing
✅ Incident response planning
✅ Employee training and phishing simulations
✅ Backup and disaster recovery planning
If you are unsure if your current cyber security measures are enough, reach out to us on 01993 880 980 – we’re here to help.