Less Than 100 Employees: 3x More Likely Target

At Technewsworld the following quote is interesting:

“Attackers do not just target large enterprises. Recent reporting shows companies with less than 100 employees are three times more likely to be the target of a cyberattack — yet, often lack sufficient cybersecurity measures and resources to manage their risk,” said Shena Seneca Tharnish, VP for cybersecurity products at Comcast Business.

More info from Technewsworld’s comcast data:

“In the 12 months from July 2021 to June 2022, 55% of Comcast Business customers experienced botnet attacks, while nearly 50% had to contend with malware and phishing attacks. According to internet activity the researchers monitored, financial and high-tech brands were the most targeted by phishing scams at 41% and 36%, respectively.”

As it mentions then focuses on the phenomenon that the attackers hit small businesses since it is easier to attack them. (and a large payday at the bigger companies may not be as easy).

It is easier to hit many small companies rather than a few large ones.

i.e. 50 * $400 = $20,000

At a big company one may make $10,000 but it will take time or it might not happen.

It is easier and more fruitful for the attackers to hit small companies.

Unfortunately a small company can get hit at their vendors or suppliers as well, like Rackspace (which hosts email and websites for small and large companies.

Not missing a beat Rackspace news proved it at malwarebytes.com:

“On December 2, customers began experiencing problems connecting and logging into their Exchange environments. Rackspace started investigating and discovered an issue that affected its Hosted Exchange environments. 

Now Rackspace has announced it was actually a ransomware incident that caused the service disruptions.”

They have hosted Exchange as one of their services.

 

What does this mean? As a small business you may have a cloud service hosting your email… what happens when the company that hosts the email gets hacked? And then ransomware is on the systems?

The comment about small businesses being targeted 3x more likely target is because chance of success is higher for the attacker (due to the lack of defense in general).

 

Contact  us to discuss the items you can do to prevent ransomware.