While I’m sure we all care about cyber security a little. I suspect a lot of people don’t really pay much attention to it. After all, as a small business you’re hardly likely to noticed by hackers. Or maybe you feel that your business isn’t a digital business so it’s not something you need to care about.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case. And you need to do much more than have anti-virus and a firewall on your computer to keep your business, and your customers, safe.
If you’ve ever asked yourself “why should I care about cyber security?” here are some compelling reasons:
Cost of lost business
If you don’t care about cyber security and something happens you can be unable to carry on the full range of your business for a period. These disruptions can be relatively minor, such as a piece of non-essential software not working correctly. Through to catastrophic issues that prevent you from doing any business for an extended period of time. Any level of technological disruption may cause you to lose business whether it takes the form of lost customers or lost working time.
Cost of fixing issues
Along with the cost of lost business cyber security issues also come with a repair cost. Sometimes that’s the cost of getting an IT Professional in to repair the issues. Maybe it’s the cost of buying new hardware or software to replaced compromised items. And maybe it’s the cost of compensation payments when something drastic occurs. What ever the costs are, the very worst time they could occur is when your income is also impacted.
Customer Trust
If you service customers you probably have quite a lot of customer data, some of it personal. Depending on your business you probably have at a minimum client names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. You may also have their birth dates to send birthday wishes, names of their partners and children. It’s possible you have credit card details, bank account details and even if you don’t – what could happen if someone hacked your email and sent an invoice to your clients? Would they pay it? And how would they think about you in the aftermath?
Reputation
This is similar to customer trust, but I believe a little more drastic. These days customers are often wary about what details they share with businesses. And I think that they’re often going to be generous to you if an incident occurs. However, if you have multiple incidents, or you have an issue caused by outright carelessness your customers (and potential customers!) are probably going to be less forgiving. That’s where you can suffer severe and permanent damage to your reputation. And if you’re thinking “that would never happen to me”. Don’t forget, it doesn’t matter whether it’s you that causes the issue, or a staff member, or a contractor. Your reputation is the one that will suffer.
Legal requirements
I’ve left this until last, but it’s probably the most important – there are legal requirements. First of all, there’s the Privacy Act. Then there’s the Notifiable Data Breach scheme which mandates reporting of any breaches by businesses regulated under the Privacy Act.
On top of the sheer inconvenience caused by a cyber security breach, the above reasons should be more than enough to stop you asking “why should I care about cyber security?”.
