Two Outdated IT Attitudes
(and 20 stats that might change your thinking)
A powerful IT network gives your business the resources to compete in the digital world—but being on the big stage means you’re exposed to the same security threats as every other business. And that requires a strategy that keeps your company on guard and your data resources protected.
In cybersecurity, the threat footprint continues to grow. New, more advanced cyber threats are appearing daily, as criminals and malicious actors continually seek more sophisticated ways to attack, undermine and weaken businesses. Their goal is to hit with the greatest impact—overstep your defenses, take as much as they can and evade detection. Your business data is a resource, and as long as it remains a commodity you depend on, it will be a target.
An effective IT strategy that keeps your business ahead of threats means adopting a mindset that has you confidently answering yes to this question: “Does my business have adequate resources to manage IT security effectively?” And doing so might mean having to forget your old way of thinking.
In this blog, we look at two outdated approaches to IT management and make a case for why it might be time to change your stance.
“I’ll just fix it when it breaks.”
Today’s businesses are heavily data-reliant and their daily processes have become deeply digitized. it’s outdated to think you can keep skating by on a reactive plan for your IT systems. It’s understandable not to want to pay to maintain or upgrade a system that is currently working, but short-sighted thinking can get you stuck. Even as technology improves, it’s not infallible. Whether problems are human caused or the result of malicious activity, technology tends to stumble at some point.
Downtime is too costly and too many business processes are inextricably tied to accessing that crucial information. Computers are not just for word processing and file storage. They operate the applications and store the data we rely on to do business.
Could your business operate without network access? If yours is like most today, probably not. When something inevitably does go wrong, you’ll be paying for both costly repairs a price much tougher to calculate: the cost of lost business.
“It won’t happen to my business.”
The mindset that your business won’t experience a serious IT issue doesn’t hold up well today, considering the mounting number of threats to your IT systems. As if human error or natural disasters weren’t enough to worry about, the threat of cybercrime has become too common, complex and financially devastating to ignore. The tools hackers employ to carry out attacks are growing more advanced all the time, giving them the ability to reach more victims, access more information and slip farther beneath the shroud of secrecy and anonymity.
Cybercriminals don’t just target large enterprises. Small- and medium-size businesses are often some of the biggest targets for criminals because hackers perceive vulnerability—either that such businesses don’t prioritize IT spending or are currently operating with older or outdated security protocols.
Another factor that makes small and medium businesses a target is that cybercriminals assume those companies think, “I’m too small. They won’t find me and they wouldn’t want my information anyway.” That’s wrong. The fact is, criminals are looking for vulnerable targets wherever they can find them. Each security weakness they can exploit is another opportunity to steal valuable company information and, with it, your money. Just because your business is smaller doesn’t mean you don’t have something valuable to lose.
A Proactive Solution
The only way to be 100 percent protected from threats is to go offline. That’s not feasible for most businesses. Cloud computing has made it cheaper and easier for businesses to host their data and applications remotely, instead of running servers and storage devices on their own premises.
Providers offer reliable and secure services, but every business owner must ensure they choose a trusted host. Arvig’s Business IT Services reliably backs up business customer’s data and provides a full complement of disaster recovery features. Backup and data recovery solutions are designed to quickly revive your network following unplanned downtime to ensure your business is up and running as quickly as possible.
Arvig’s experts proactively monitor and troubleshoot the network handling your data 24/7/365, maintaining business continuity
The Numbers Tell the Rest of the Story
Doing business with an unsecured IT network is taking too much of a chance. These statistics show that remaining unprepared for unexpected problems is a major risk. Is your business willing to take such a leap? Consider these 20 statistics:
Cyber Security
1. Gartner forecasts that worldwide IT security spending will increase 8.7 percent from 2018 to $124 billion.
2. More than 260 million records containing sensitive information have been compromised in the first four months of 2018.
3. While the time it takes to detect an attack varies, on average, it takes more than 200 days to detect a breach.
4. Almost a quarter of cybersecurity professionals (23 percent) assess the probability of future attacks to their organization as very or extremely likely.
5. Cybercrime damages will cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021.
Ransomware
6. 54 percent of organizations experienced one or more ransomware incidents in 2017.
7. In 2017, the average ransom payment grew to $3,765 per ransom.
Mobile Security
8. 81 percent of organizations claim that negligent or careless employees are the top risk to endpoint security.
9. In 2015, 3.3 million mobile apps were classified as malware.
Cloud Security
10. 85 percent of enterprises are now using sensitive data in the cloud, up from 54 percent in 2015.
11. On average, 9.3 percent of documents shared externally in the cloud contain sensitive content.
Healthcare IT
12. In 2016, 64 percent of patient medical files were successfully targeted by cybercriminals.
13. 80 percent of small medical practices are unconfident their mobile devices are HIPAA compliant.
Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR)
14. Every week, 140,000 hard drives crash in the U.S.
15. A simple drive recovery can cost upward of $7,500 and success is not guaranteed.
16. 44 percent of businesses estimate they could lose $10,000 or more during an hour of downtime.
17. 60 percent of businesses will go out of business within six months of a data disaster.
18. Human error was responsible for 23 percent of data loss incidents in 2016.
19. 58 percent of SMBs say they test their disaster recovery plan just once a year or less, while 33 percent say they test infrequently or never.
20. By 2020, the world will need to defend 50 times more data than it does today.
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