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Why is it that 60% of businesses fail after a major Cyber attack?
- Spam Email – most attacks come in through well crafted emails (spear phishing)
- Social Engineering – An attacker can use 1 and 4 to call you to craft a sneaky method to get on your network.
- Darkweb – all information created from 1,2,4, and 5 are here and for sale to other hackers. I.e. a cyber attacker does not need to be an expert at all things, only at 1 and buy the others.
- Facebook Hacks – or other social media. Hackers use social media to profile you and then use 1&2 to attack you
- IoT (Internet of Things) in House – vulnerabilities are not patched and attacks come into IoT devices
- Unknown Zero-Day – unknown sophisticated attack using non-defensible methods(i.e. cannot defend against this)
The following is per Smallbiztrends.com , and it looks like that is what it says: 60% of small companies go out of business within 6 months of a cyber attack.
I want to discuss why that is?
Let’s assume our small business is like most small businesses, they are living “paycheck-to-paycheck” in a small biz manner. I.e. there is enough business to make payroll and to do a few things for the business: small changes for new technological improvements(new computer, new phones, website improvements). But is there enough time and effort to overhaul IT cyberdefense? Why overhaul when you can make adjustments, since with adjustments we can still stay alive and keep on surviving another year.
What if an unforeseen attack occurs? That we are not ready for? So that means we have to reconstruct our IT information “from scratch”. I.e. from non-electronic sources. In that case a lot of things can go wrong, and if expenses go too high or it takes too long to reconstruct, one can easily see how it might be easier for the small business to go out of business rather than create a huge debt burden. This is why 60% of small business goes out of business with a successful cyber attack.
The attacks coming into your business are no longer from loner hackers or your neighborhood Geek with too much time on his hands… The attackers are sophisticated and in great breadth, which are certainly coming daily because it is easy to setup thousands and millions of attacks on previously purchased databases with information stolen in years past hacks on the Darkweb. The hacker uses his computer knowledge and this information to craft sneaky spear phishing attacks. Once on the network it could be months before you actually find out what is happening, since he will sell his access to your network to others who are experts at extracting money out of you.
So the hacker goal is to employ a number of experts over time to infiltrate and eventually extract extortion scams out of ransomware schemes… FBI news and tips for dealing with Ransomware.
New IoT attack examples from Anson McCade’s Twitter feed:
So in the future a crafty sneaky attacker could control more than your business servers, but also your fitness devices and more. I.e. Pay the hacker $1000 or else …
Contact us to update and overhaul your cyberdefense methods.