Managed services and Cyber Security
You probably hear a lot about Cyber Security these days. While sometime the term is thrown around to scare business owners, other times it has proven to be a wake-up call, one that small businesses can learn from, in order to protect themselves from online threats that can have a devastating impact. Numbers don’t lie, and as much as you’d like to believe your business is safe, the worst could happen at any time. Because antivirus software alone can only do so much to protect your business, managed services have established themselves as much needed solution. The following stats will further assist you with identifying and understanding your need for managed services from a technology provider.
The Numbers
Small businesses are not at risk of being attacked, but worse, they’ve already fallen victim to cyber threats. Per Small Business Trends, 55 percent of survey respondents say their companies have experienced cyber-attack sometime between 2015 and 2016. Not only that, 50 percent reported they have experienced data breaches with customer and employee information during that time, too. The aftermath of these incidents? These companies spent an average of $879,582 to fix the damages done to their IT assets and recover their data. To make matters worse, disruption to their daily operations cost an average of $955,429.
The Attacks
So, what types of attack did these businesses experience? The most common are as follows: Ransomware, web-based attacks, phishing, SQL injection, stolen devices, denial of services, advanced malware, cross-site scripting, and others.
Why managed services?
Managed services are the most effective prevention and protection from these malicious threats. They include a full range of proactive IT support that focuses on advanced security such as around the clock monitoring and updates, data backup and encryption, real-time threat prevention and elimination, network and firewall protection and more. Not only that, but because managed services are designed to identify weak spots in your IT infrastructure and fix them, you’ll enjoy other benefits including faster network performance, business continuity and disaster recovery as well as minimal downtime. One of the best things about managed services is the fact that you get a dedicated team of IT professionals ready to assist with any technology problems you might have, for the fraction of the price you would pay for having in-house personnel. Being proactive when it comes to cyber security is the only way to protect what you’ve worked hard to build.
