Unlike big financial institutions and commercial enterprises, SMBs (small and medium businesses) generally don’t manage large volumes of sensitive personal or financial data. For a long time, this let them fly under the cyber-attack radar. Those days are gone. According to Verizon’s 2015 Data Breach Investigations Report, published in conjunction with numerous partners including several governmental agencies, smaller organizations accounted for the majority of data breaches. But most small businesses haven’t changed their approach to security, limiting their investments and efforts to the minimum necessary to comply with regulations.
These businesses have enough sensitive data to lure in an attack, but do not typically have the infrastructure to protect themselves or to recover. In fact, the NCSA says that more than half of the small businesses who fall victim to a cyber-attack will close within six months because they simply cannot recover from the damages of the attack.
The main cybersecurity challenges for companies of any size are sophisticated, frequent attacks that require constant adjustments to defense systems, as well as ongoing management of security patches. To address these issues, large enterprises invest substantial funds and resources in a stack of tools to protect themselves against threats. These tools range from gateway and web mail security systems, through comprehensive policies, training, monitoring and detection tools, and all the way down to numerous endpoint agents such as antivirus, host prevention, encryption and device controls. Once implemented, these systems require maintenance, constant patching, updates and upgrades.
In contrast, the majority of small businesses lack the resources to implement a multifaceted approach, and the costs – time, manpower, budget – are often too high. Nearly 90% of small businesses operate without professional IT managers on staff. Without such support, they often cannot manage the ongoing logistics and effort of patching vulnerabilities. As a result, SMBs often leave themselves exposed, presenting an attractive target for mode
rn attacks.
Once an organization actually experiences an attack, outcomes range from the simple “virus has been cleaned,” to a successful infiltration of ransomware which can lock up an entire network and make it impossible to continue operating.
The road to recovery after a cyber-attack is long and costly. In addition to the potential loss of business and reputation, an attack can lead to devastating financial losses for both employees and customers, plus the long and arduous task of recovering data. The reduction in productivity as a consequence of an attack typically hits small businesses particularly hard.
Huffington Post found that 31% of SMBs still do nothing to protect themselves from a cyber threat, even though, according to the NCSA, attacks aimed at small businesses have doubled in the last five years.
So how can SMBs protect themselves from a cyber-attack without draining all of their limited resources? How can they offset the impediments of constant vulnerability patching?
Knowing that the highest costs of a cyberattack are incurred post-breach, SMBs need to switch their focus to prevention of a breach ever occurring. Easier said than done? Not anymore.
Morphisec’s Moving Target Defense technology keeps SMBs effectively ahead of attackers, making targets and vulnerabilities impossible to locate, identify or penetrate – before an attack can even start. Prevention is the new paradigm shift in cyber security and Morphisec is already making it a reality.
Morphisec Protector is a lightweight “install & forget” service that conceals vulnerabilities in applications and web browsers and traps any attempts at access. It never disrupts the endpoint operation, has no run-time process and has zero performance impact. Morphisec Protector has another major advantage for small businesses – it runs in “user mode” so has no need to get into the deep kernel level that other security products require. It never needs any updates of rules, signatures or databases, and requires no configuration or reboot after installation. Not only does Morphisec prevent attacks, it eliminates dependence on a full-fledged IT team to manage and update the endpoints in their network and reduces the urgency of vulnerability patching.
With a lightweight prevention solution that is powerful, slim and hassle-free, Morphisec solves the two core problems of SMBs: Advanced threat protection and patching gaps. For SMBs, these benefits can make the difference between going out of business and surviving a cyber-attack.
Our solution experts look forward to demonstrating how you can prevent cyber-attacks in your SMB. Contact us at info@morphisec.com or visit: www.Morphisec.com/schedule-a-demo.