Imagine, for a minute, that you’re the CEO of a scrappy, promising new startup. In the beginning, it was just you and two other employees working on dinky PCs out of a 12-by-12-foot office. Now times are picking up, and the company is heading into the uncharted waters of rapid growth. As the business moves into the public eye — and, in turn, the hungry eyes of potential hackers — it’s become obvious that you’re going to need to lock down your data. At this critical stage, a cyberattack could mean the death of everything you and your team have built. But, the budget is looking lean. Everything you’ve done so far has been by the skin of your teeth, so why should security be any different?
You put one of your more tech-savvy employees on the case, tasking him with finding the cheapest cybersecurity solutions available. Sure, he may not be an expert, but he understands computers. He scours the web, perusing dozens of “Top 5 Cheap Firewall Software” articles, and with the help of a scrappy how-to guide, installs what seems to be the best of the lot on your servers and across all your computers. The entire process takes 10 hours and costs the company next to nothing. Potential crisis averted. You turn your attention to other matters. We’ll revisit our cybersecurity later, you think, once we have a little more financial wiggle room.
During the following year, the company’s success skyrockets. The phone is ringing off the hook, new business is flooding in, and your profit margin is exploding. You even ended up snagging a feature in Entrepreneur magazine. Your company is the envy of all your peers. That is, until the day that you get hacked.
One morning, an advanced strain of ransomware easily sidesteps your free antivirus and starts wreaking havoc. It slithers through your systems and locks you out of everything — from client data to basic Word documents — and encrypts it behind a paywall, demanding $50,000 in Bitcoin or you’ll lose access to all of it indefinitely. You feel the pain of regret for not making room in your budget for a robust cybersecurity solution and panic over what to do about the $50K ransom.
This may sound like nothing more than a horror story, but in reality, this happens to business owners all over the world each and every day. An IBM security study from last December found that 70% of the hundreds of businesses surveyed had paid to resolve a ransomware attack. Half of these businesses paid over $10,000 and the remaining 20% paid over $40,000. These statistics exclude the millions of dollars of damage caused by other forms of malicious software every year.
The key takeaway here is that when your time, money, and business are on the line, it simply doesn’t pay to be cheap when choosing your cybersecurity technology.
Think of it this way. Say, with your free antivirus, you’re “saving” $100 a month. Lo and behold, a virus manages to punch its way through and causes chaos throughout the company server. You thank your lucky stars that the virus isn’t ransomware, but you are frustrated that clearing the culprit still takes you countless hours, and the downtime ends up costing your business more than that $100 a month. Instead of throwing those thousands of dollars down the drain, you’d be better off giving each of your employees a $1,000 bonus!
Free antivirus software, giveaway cyber protections, and $5 firewalls seem to get the job done just fine — until a hacker cuts through those defenses like a warm knife through butter. Hackers love to see these outdated, cheap barriers guarding your priceless data. After all, these paper-thin defenses keep them in business. You wouldn’t use a rusty, old lock that you bought at a flea market to protect your home, so why are you installing primitive cybersecurity software to keep precious company resources safe?
In today’s world of rampant cybercrime, it’s inevitable that somebody will come knocking at your digital door. When that day comes, do you want a free piece of software that you saw on LifeHacker at your side? Or, would you rather have a comprehensive, tried-and-tested security solution?
Don’t be the shortsighted CEO from our example scenario and risk everything just to save a quick buck. Invest in your company’s future and protect yourself with the most powerful tools on the market.
Have questions or concerns regarding cybersecurity? We’re here for you. Drop us a line at 317-372-7625 or schedule a FREE consultation here.