Why You Need a Cybersecurity Plan for Your Small Business in 2024
By Tony Anscombe
While we mostly hear about data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other hacking attempts affecting large companies, 50% of cyber attacks target small-to-medium sized businesses and over 60% of those attacked go out of business. For many small businesses, understanding the latest cybersecurity technology can be almost as challenging as keeping up with emerging cyber threats and risks—never mind the ever-changing regulatory landscape and new compliance demands.
Meanwhile, tight budgets can make getting ahead of increasingly sophisticated cyber threats even more difficult for smaller companies. That is why investing in a cybersecurity strategy should be at or near the top of the priority list of every small business in 2024.
How can small business owners bolster their cybersecurity positions despite persistent resource challenges, budget constraints, and accelerating change? The foundation for robust SMB cybersecurity is an effective cybersecurity strategy that reflects business goals, addresses any critical gaps, and delivers measurably improved cyber resilience. One approach to ensuring business success is to develop a business-aligned two-year to five-year cybersecurity strategy.
A cybersecurity plan as a business enabler
A business-focused security strategy helps keep you on a path to efficient and effective outcomes and ensures your cybersecurity investments are a business enabler. Cybersecurity exists to serve the business. So, before you implement new controls or even analyze risks, start by identifying what your business is trying to accomplish.
For example, if your business strategy focuses on growth, then your small business's cybersecurity plan needs to have the ability to easily scale and support that growth. This might mean prioritizing specific changes to your security program to support sales and marketing, or some other key growth area of your business. From there you can make better tactical choices, like whether you should invest in a particular security tool.
You want to demonstrate to customers, employees, potential investors, and other stakeholders that the company takes cybersecurity seriously. This can be a competitive differentiator that helps keep existing customers and attract new ones, improve employee retention, make your business attractive to potential investors, and more. A cybersecurity program not only reduces risk, thereby preserving a business's value, but it also creates new value.
Consider business risks in a cybersecurity strategy
A cybersecurity plan that aligns with business goals also factors in business risks. This helps ensure that the security program reduces the chance of top threats like ransomware attacks and data exfiltration. Understanding risks also supports a faster and more effective incident response, thus potentially reducing financial and reputational damage should an attack occur.
But to reduce cyber risk or coordinate incident response, employees need direction and guidance—i.e., a formal security policy. Having a formal plan shows employees that the company takes cybersecurity seriously, and so they will too. A plan also serves as a guide for employees to follow to ensure compliance with federal, state, and local regulations, as well as internal security goals.
For example, a security policy can guide employees on how to collect, store, and process sensitive data. It can also influence technology purchases to ensure interoperability with other systems and help avoid “security silos” caused by individual employees or teams choosing technology in a vacuum.
A “product strategy” alone is insufficient
Security products, especially those that offer essentials, like multifactor authentication (MFA), encryption, and endpoint detection and response (EDR), can be vital to a business's success. But a security strategy that’s really just a “product strategy” can waste precious resources, fail to meet the needs of a business, and still leave a business exposed to unacceptable and avoidable cyber risks. Tactical decisions, like what products to buy, should be steered by a business's goals and any potential risks. If your business has a goal of embracing cloud-based technology, for instance, then your security tool purchases should reflect that.
Another problem with a product-centric security strategy is increased administrative, integration, and training complexity. Many small businesses have an overload of security products from multiple vendors, each of which must be kept operational, updated, licensed, etc. Many times these products are not fully implemented or are not complementary with each other. Small businesses should invest in security solutions that are suited to their business, are complementary under one unified umbrella, and won’t be wasted or inefficiently used.
Investing in cybersecurity should be a priority for every small business
Investing in a well-thought-out cybersecurity plan should be a major priority in 2024 for small businesses, not only to help protect their company and their reputation, but also to help them achieve their growth objectives.
A strategy, however, doesn't have to be expensive. Smart small businesses will take a holistic approach and invest in a cybersecurity strategy that will grow with them while delivering the protection they need to succeed.
FAQs about small businesses and cybersecurity
Is cybersecurity worth the cost?
The value of investing in cybersecurity is directly related to a small business’s attitude towards risk. If a company’s board or founders want stability and resilience if the business encounters a cyber incident, then a measured approach to investing in cybersecurity is essential and well worth the investment.
Do small businesses need cybersecurity?
No business is immune to cyber attacks. Small businesses must understand that cybercriminals will look for the weakest link and exploit it in order to gain access to their business partners, suppliers, and or customers. The potential reputational and financial damage of cyber attacks can be irreparable.
About the Author
Post by: Tony Anscombe
Tony Anscombe is the chief security evangelist for ESET. With over 25 years of security industry experience, Tony is an established author, blogger, and speaker on the current threat landscape, security technologies, data protection, privacy and trust, and internet safety. His speaking portfolio includes industry conferences RSA, Black Hat, VB, CTIA, MEF, Gartner Risk and Security Summit, and the Child Internet Safety Summit. He is regularly quoted in security, technology, and business media, including BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times, and USA Today, with broadcast appearances on CNN, Bloomberg, BBC, CTV, KRON, ABC, and CBS.
Company: ESET
Website: www.eset.com
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