Bharat Bhise HNA is an expert when it comes to cybersecurity and he has invested a huge amount of his career into helping businesses to both be more aware of the prenatal risks of cyberattacks, and in educating them on how to avoid them and beef up their levels of security. We spoke to Bharat last week on the topic of cybersecurity and what exactly businesses need to know about the potential of a cyberattack. If you run a business, no matter what size it is, here is why you need to be more aware of your cybersecurity.
Information
If you believe that you are not at risk of a cyberattack then just think of it like this, let’s assume that someone dow gain access to your systems, and steals all of the information which is in there, how catastrophic would that be to your business? If you have customer information, business plans, accounts, plans for growth, employee details and personal information, all of this would be at risk. The hacker could easily sell this information on to someone, or they could easily use it for identity fraud and a million other ways that will benefit them, and cause you issues. Cyber criminals are smart and they will target those businesses who do not have a smart plan for cybersecurity. If you think that it cannot happen to you, think again.
Low Hanging Fruit
The precise reason why hackers will target small businesses is because they don’t believe that you have strong cybersecurity which will make it much easier for them to attack. You are most definitely at risk unless you decide to invest in some better cybersecurity for your business.
Lost Sales and Damaged Reputation
The consequences of your being hacked will be powerful and they can result in your reputation being damaged, which will ultimately result in lost sales and lower revenue. If you are a customer who has their information stolen from the business which they have used, how likely do you think it will be that this customer wishes to come back and trust the business again? Equally if something like this happens word is going to get out pretty quickly and that is going to ensure that nobody else is going to wish to use this business either. Reputations online are something which are incredibly hard to earn, yet very simple to destroy and if you allow a cyberattack to happen, you can all but guarantee that your reputation is going to be utterly decimated.
The key is to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to obtain access to the computers in the workplace and the information which is on there. There is never a 100% guarantee that you can prevent a cyberattack, much like you are probably not 100% protected from a robbery, but there are many ways in which you can protect yourself and prevent this happening as much as possible.
