Cybersecurity has simply blown up in the last 5-10 years, and that says something about the state of internet security. There wouldn’t be so many wildly successful cybersecurity firms if it weren’t for the thousands of breaches that pop up all over the internet.
If you’re a business owner, you likely have many accounts on the internet and files stored in the cloud. Ecommerce business owners have even more to worry about because they accept credit cards. No matter what type of business you operate, you should know what the business security landscape looks like for 2020.
1. Every 39 seconds, there’s a hacker attack.
This means that one in three Americans experiences a cyber attack each year. Most of the time, these hacking attempts are successful because users don’t use secure passwords. Hackers might hack your information for many reasons, but monetization is the most prevalent.
2. Half of all cyber attacks target small businesses.
Don’t operate under the false assumption that hackers won’t touch your business because it’s small and you don’t have much to steal. Hackers love small businesses because they often operate with significantly fewer security layers than larger companies.
3. A data breach can take 6 months or more to detect.
If you’re not paying close attention, you might not know that you’ve been attacked, and a lot of businesses don’t. By the time it’s discovered, it’s often too late to do anything, and many companies lose their ability to continue operating.
4. More than 60 percent of businesses that experience an attack shut down within 6 months.
Some of this has to do with the financial aspect–it’s extremely expensive to handle the aftermath of a cyber attack. Businesses might also close their doors because their reputation has gone down the drain or they discovered the cyber attack so late that they couldn’t undo any damage.
5. Three industries are attacked more often than others.
No industry is immune from cyber attacks, but the three industries that have problems more than others are government, retail, and technology. These companies tend to use fewer layers of protection, making them easy targets to hack.
6. The cost of cybersecurity is to exceed $6 trillion by the end of the year.
2020 will be a record year for cybersecurity spending. This sum accounts for the businesses that pay for both security against cyber attacks as well as steps they take to mitigate it.
7. Almost all cybersecurity breaches are caused by human error.
That’s right. More than 95 percent of breaches occur because a human being made a mistake. They might have ignored security protocol or used the same password for everything. It could also be as simple as someone sharing a piece of confidential information with a neighbor.
This statistic is perhaps the most important because it underscores the importance of training employees each year on the risks of security attacks.