What are the costs and benefits of developing cybersecurity programs in business?

Developing a proper cybersecurity program is vital if businesses, especially small ones, want to protect their data and customers from malicious attackers. To develop one businesses must decide where they want to focus their resources. When the business knows which data is too important to risk being compromised by outside threats they can invest money and resources into protecting it. However there are relatively no real downsides to implementing a cybersecurity program into a business. During a recent study that interviewed a variety of small businesses the numbers showed that data breaches costed them from $120,000 to $1.24 million dollars in damages. These kinds of breaches could sink a small business if proper security measures aren’t put in place to protect them. Larger businesses have it no easier either, medium and large businesses reported to IBM that the average cost of data breaches costed them $3.92 million dollars. So if a good cybersecurity program is incorporated into a system it lowers the loss of assets in data breaches. It also puts customers and consumers minds at ease knowing that their data is secured.

How can you tell if your computer is safe?

There are many tell tale signs that your computer has been infected with malware. One of the signs is that your computer is running slower than usual and is constantly crashing. Another is that you are experiencing pop up ads that are constantly bombarding your screen with ridiculous products. Another is that you are constantly shown error messages from your device. All these with the fact that you know that prior to all these signs you may have visited a shady website it could be that your device picked up a virus. There are ways you can secure your computer though from threats. One method is a firewall, Windows and Mac computers already come with one incorporated into their systems. However as a user you can constantly go in and test your firewall to see if its still operating correctly. You can also update browsers to their latest secure versions. Small things like these can make your computer a little bit more secure.

WORKS CITED

Komando, Kim. “5 Ways to Test Your Computer’s Security.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 4 June 2017, www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/komando/2017/06/02/5-ways-test-your-computers-security/102354032/.

Rinaldi, Andrew. “The Cost of Cybersecurity and How to Budget for It.” Maureen Data Systems, 22 Nov. 2019, www.mdsny.com/the-cost-of-cybersecurity-and-how-to-budget-for-it/.

Zaharia, Andra. “13+ Warning Signs Your Computer Is Infected with Malware [Updated 2019].” Heimdal Security Blog, 6 Mar. 2020, heimdalsecurity.com/blog/warning-signs-operating-system-infected-malware/.