Why do we lock our doors and windows when we leave our home? Why do we invest in home monitoring and/or surveillance cameras and more? Because we want to do everything possible to protect our greatest personal investment from unauthorized access and/or threats.
Are we doing the same thing to protect our business and/or the assets in our business? It’s crucial to take cybersecurity seriously and fully assess and protect all of the potential access points.
Our company, I4C Consulting Inc, recently became a partner with Field Effect, an Ottawa based leader in the cybersecurity space. Through this partnership, we’ve gained a number of valuable insights into the ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity, and I thought I’d share some of these with my LinkedIn connections.
As cybersecurity attacks become more and more prevalent, many of us are receiving notifications from companies we do business with informing us that our data has been breached. So far in 2023, we’ve seen incident reports from a number of major brands, like Manulife, Yum! Brands (Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell), Yellow Pages Canada, TD Bank, LCBO and several others. It is crucial to acknowledge that cybersecurity incidents are not limited to big brands; any company, regardless of its size, is susceptible to attacks without the right security measures in place.
The bad dudes are getting pretty sophisticated. As we’ve all pivoted to remote and/or hybrid working models over the past 3 years, we’ve also increased the threat surface, offering attackers more opportunities through various vulnerabilities (ex. remote desktop apps, misconfigured web-based systems, legacy operating systems, unpatched internet-facing applications, and outdated browsers). As we all add IoT devices (think smart security cameras or thermostats at two examples), we are also offering up more access points for the bad guys (as they connect to our networks, cloud apps, and other tech). Furthermore, attackers exploit a simple, yet effective, technique known as phishing, wherein they trick employees into revealing their account login and password by sending deceptive emails that convincingly mimic legitimate communications. Just one of these can leave you facing operational disruption, significant financial consequences, and the loss or exposure of your data. The average cost of a data breach alone is $4.35M according to IBM.
While it’s critical to have cyber security insurance and backups in place, you can’t rely on these to prevent an attack. You need to ensure your operations are secure now, to protect your customers, your employees, and ultimately your business.
Concerned? We can start by running a FREE Attack Surface Report for you. Unless you are already protected by Covalence, I’d highly recommend that you do this.