Maxwell Ferrier

CYSE 200T

September 17, 2020

Every year, billions and billions of dollars are lost due to cyber-attacks.  It is imperative that small businesses do not ignore the great risks that cybercriminals impose on the safety of their business.  One common misconception is that small businesses are not targeted because they are indeed on a smaller scale than large corporations and thus do not have as many resources to take- so why should they be worried? In recent years, small business are being targeted more and more by cyber criminals.  This is because any dollar or bit of personal information an attacker can get they won’t skip a beat.  Although most are unaware, over half of small business owners have fallen victim to some kind of attack and an even higher percentage among them have been attacked more than once.

These kinds of attacks are not more often prevented by a number of factors including not realizing there is a threat, laziness, procrastination, and evolving methods by attackers to lure people in and get what they are looking for. Cloud services used by these small businesses may not have proper security in place, and thus are a gap in security making it easy for attackers to penetrate.  Phishing is another common method used by these criminals to gain access to emails, passwords, and sensitive financial information. Small business also do not enjoy certain protections under the law that consumers do, and often times they are unaware of this in the first place (who ever said starting a business was going to be easy, right?).

            The bottom line is small business entities around the globe must take their cybersecurity frameworks and implementation seriously to protect the livelihood of their business.  A successful attack on a small enough business usually signifies the beginning of the end and is not something that should be taken lightly. Fortunately, with some education, preparation, and awareness, these devastating situations can be avoided or at least mitigated when they do occur.