If you run a mid-sized business, you might think that you don’t have to worry as much about cyber attacks. After all, it’s the big enterprise companies that are the inviting ones, right?
Why Mid-Size Businesses Must Have Enterprise-Grade Security
After all, they are the ones with more data to steal and more resources to exploit. The truth is, that mid-sized businesses can be targets just like big companies can. In fact, in some ways, they can be even more inviting.
Since too many mid-sized and smaller businesses think that they are off the radar of criminals and hackers, this conversely opens these businesses up to data breaches and theft.
Criminals are well aware of this attitude and that many mid-sized companies do not take their security as seriously as the large companies, making them the perfect victims.
Unique Challenges
Financial
Small and mid-size businesses face unique challenges that enterprise corporations do not. They have limited financial resources, for example.
This means that not only are they not as capable of investing in infrastructure, but they also have great risk if the unthinkable happens.
A large company may be able to shrug off the extra expenses and lost data that results from a breach or theft, but a mid-sized company may not be able to withstand the blow.
Luckily, it’s easier than ever for mid-sized companies to get enterprise-grade cybersecurity. There are scalable cloud solutions, for example, for businesses of all sizes.
They offer protection that’s appropriate for the situation of each individual company. That way, a mid-size business can invest in the security they need without breaking the bank.
Besides, while it may be costly to create a cybersecurity infrastructure, it will pay off in the long run when compared to the potential costs of a data breach, theft, or ransomware situation.
Manpower
Manpower is another issue for mid-size businesses. They may have many staff members but are not in the position to hire someone full-time for cybersecurity.
In many cases, there is an IT person that handles everything related to IT, including security.
While they may be good at what they do, cybersecurity may not be their specialty.
Plus, if their focus is divided, they may not be able to keep up with new trends and threats that are on the horizon.
Having a small security staff or no security experts on your team can also lead to human error and insufficient incident response.
While you can do your utmost to train every employee on best practices for cyber safety, there will inevitably be internal mistakes and sophisticated infiltrations perpetrated by crafty threat actors.
If you do not have the proper level of security in place, then those mistakes and infiltrations can be disastrous. You could end up with ransomware holding your network hostage or very sensitive data being compromised.
With enterprise-grade security, these concerns are drastically reduced. You can rest easy knowing that your network is secure and that the stress of weak security infrastructure on your IT team has been lessened.
Your IT specialists can focus more effort on other things, and mistakes can be mitigated. This is because the right security measures will be able to defend against and detect dangerous cyber threats.
Security Steps to Take
Encryption
There are certain priorities that you should have when it comes to protecting your data. For instance, everything that you send or receive should be through encryption to avoid detection from hackers.
Encryption will convert your data into code that can only be read by those with permission, keeping it safe and secure from prying eyes even if they are able to access your data somehow.
Multi-Factor Authentication
Just having passwords made up of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters are not enough.
You need to have extra authentication to properly protect your data and business. This involves not just entering a password to access devices and portals but also taking an additional step.
This usually means entering one password, which triggers a message to your mobile phone that contains another code to enter before you can proceed. This means that for someone else to access the portal, they would need to have your phone, which is not very likely.
Threat Detection
Even with all of those precautions, there is always a chance that something could get through. You need an effective threat detection system that will identify issues and eliminate them if necessary.
XDR solutions can do just that for the entirety of your network, keeping everything safe. XDR can operate locally or through the cloud and integrates multiple security processes to keep you protected.
IT also tracks and monitors everything in your network and system, so that if there is a breach or another issue, you can easily go back and identify where the issue originated so that you can address it.
The automation features of XDR platforms can make them effective solutions for companies with smaller IT/security teams, helping to reduce response times and optimize workflows.
It’s important as a mid-size business that you don’t think you are too small to notice. Hackers and thieves are always looking for any advantage, and your business might offer them a prime target.
Too many businesses of this size don’t take the necessary precautions and invest in the cybersecurity infrastructure that will keep data properly safe.
Conclusion
Luckily, while our digital world creates risk, it also offers opportunity. There are many solutions out there that are affordable and easily onboard for businesses of any size.
That way, you can get your data protected quickly and be confident knowing that it is safe behind enterprise-grade security.
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