Security Risk Rate vs. Spend Rate
According to the 2019 SMB IT Security Report from Untangle, 80% of the small to medium-sized surveyed businesses identify IT security as a top priority. Of the 300 worldwide businesses in the study, 29% are spending less than $100 a month to address that concern. With an annual spend of less than $1000, these businesses are likely spending more on coffee than they are on cyber safety.
With an increased digital presence in the business landscape, those numbers indicate that an enormous amount of data is more vulnerable than ever. Remote employees, social media, cloud-based solutions, and sometimes online commerce are just some of the factors that contribute to the risk of exposure. This doesn’t even take into the account the high likelihood of that business not surviving a data breach.
So why doesn’t the money that is spent to prevent the damage, match the known risk factor and overall priority to a business?
We can only hope that is changing.
Aligning Priorities & Budget
Certainly, any monetary spend in a small business has an impact on the bottom line. But given the likelihood of not recovering from a breach, more emphasis has to be put on funds that are allocated towards prevention.
With 29% spending less than $1,000 annually and 26% not aware of their budget, we can conclude that at 55%, over half of these businesses do not know how they are budgeting to fight one of the biggest threats to their business.
It is understandable that given the increased awareness this number will change. MSPs should be educating their clients, and business owners should be informed and aware of any danger to the future of their business.
While strategically, businesses are redirecting more effort into cybersecurity, being aware of a problem is pointless if you aren’t addressing it head-on. Remote workers are also on the rise and that can pose an issue to financial and healthcare industries which have to adhere to strict regulatory compliances. Being diligent in strategy development and deployment to maintaining cybersecurity is critical.
Strong relationships within all dynamics of a business, from owner to vendor and vendor to client employees, is one of the best ways to solidify the plan to work together to fight hackers.
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