As Good as Your Reputation May Be, One Security Incident Can Bring It All Down

Small and medium-sized businesses largely rely on their standing amongst their audience, which means their reputations are critically important to preserve. Unsurprisingly, one of the fastest ways to damage—if not eliminate—their reputation amongst the public is to suffer a cybersecurity event. Let’s examine some statistics, and consider what you need to do to keep your business from becoming one.

In January 2023, 53% of Surveyed Firms Around the World Experienced a Cyberattack 

As a result, last year’s number of 48%, almost half, officially crossed the threshold into over half. This comes from a global readiness survey conducted in early 2023 by Hiscox, a specialist insurance company with offices in the United States, spread across the European Union, and in Asia.

The rest of the Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report 2023 offers some interesting insights—including what the businesses in Belgium have done and how they should be emulated—so you might want to take the time to check out its contents. There are plenty of valuable takeaways from the executive summary alone.

For our purposes, we wanted to focus on just two: the above 53%, and that businesses with less than ten employees were hit more often… accounting for 36% of all attacks.

At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, no business is safe.

How Would Your Clients and Customers React to Your Business Getting Hacked?

Or, more accurately, to your business losing their data, the data they entrusted to you?

Unless your business is the exception to a very well-established trend, not well at all. According to information compiled by Varonis in 2022:

• 65% of victims lost trust in the organization that was breached
• 80% of consumers reported that a business would lose them as a customer if their data were compromised
• 85% would tell others about the experience they had, 33.5% taking to social media to do so
• 52% of consumers claimed that security was among, if not the, most important consideration when making a buying decision

Hopefully, none of this sounds like something you want to experience as a business owner.

The Key to Protecting Your Reputation is Protecting Your Business

The long and the short of it is that the best way to keep your business in good public standing is to prevent as many cybersecurity issues as possible. As a critical part of our managed services, we can help ensure your entire infrastructure is protected. Find out more by giving us a call at (703) 743-3056, and make sure to check out all of our services while you’re here.