Building a Cybersecurity Strategy to Protect Small Businesses

Small business owners have one primary focus: growing their business. That often means that they wear several hats at once — they’re opening the doors in the morning, working with customers or employees all day, taking care of administrative tasks, and drumming up new business. They are focused primarily on customers and revenue, but often serve as a jack of all trades when it comes to just about everything else, from HR to legal to marketing.

Security at small businesses is an especially underserved function, and you can’t fault small business owners for underestimating the risks. Many of the cybersecurity attacks and breaches we see splashed across headlines happen at huge enterprise organizations.

That doesn’t mean, however, that small businesses aren’t a target to hackers. On the contrary, most small businesses have been attacked. According to the Ponemon Institute’s “2019 State of Cybersecurity in Small & Medium Size Businesses” report, 66% of small businesses said they had been the target of a cyber attack in the preceding 12 months. Almost one-third (63%) said they had been the victim of a data breach with severe financial consequences.

There are real stakes, and the sophistication of modern security threats continues to advance. And while most small businesses won’t be able to pull together the resources of an enterprise security team, there are still key steps business owners can take to begin closing security loopholes and protecting themselves now. It all starts with an end-to-end strategy covering traditional IT security, mobile protection, policymaking, access control, WiFi security, and more.

There are a few key pillars that your customers should be focusing on:

• Making sure they understand the risk and identifying key digital assets.
• Protecting their network access.
• Safeguarding their access credentials.
• Educating users.
• Ensuring that their network equipment and devices are updated frequently.
• Maintaining backup and recovery.
• Tapping outside expertise.

For a more detailed look at these key pillars, read the full story on the Comcast Business Community, and be sure to share this information with your customers.