The biggest threat to your business and how to prevent it

Whether you’re a home owner, car owner, smartphone owner or you own any other valuable piece of equipment, you’ll (hopefully) have some form of insurance in place so if there’s a fault, accident or disaster, these items are insured and can be replaced. What amazes is me is that many businesses don’t robustly protect themselves from cyber-attacks. Importantly, how do businesses insure themselves from destruction?

You can’t put a price on company data. It’s what makes the world go round in a modern day business. From important documents to customer details or prospect data, it’s a priceless asset to an organisation.

With the astronomical rise in cyber-attacks – where 54% of UK businesses were affected or disrupted by a Ransomware attack in 2016 for example – malicious cyber-attacks are now statistically more likely than a house fire or burglary. Yet many businesses have very little, or nothing at all in place to prevent, ‘insure’ or restore effectively from such an attack.

“If organisations and businesses don’t think cybercrime is an issue for them, it probably will become an issue fairly soon” says Mike Hulett, Head of Operations for the National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU), which is responsible for leading the UK’s law enforcement response to cybercrime.

“Most businesses will have insurance against things like fire and burglary, which are statistically much less likely to happen than a cyber-attack, and yet relatively few have well-developed incident response plans and effective backup and business continuity mechanisms in place” he said.

With that in mind, I’m sure you’re asking yourself, “What measures can I put in place to protect our vital business data?”

Security protocols for remaining safe
Intercept X is Sophos’ newest line of defence in response to the significant increase in Ransomware attacks across the world. From a product perspective, Sophos’s patented Cryptoguard technology blocks Ransomware attacks. During an attack, if a couple of files get encrypted, Intercept X stops the attacks and prevents any further disruption. On top of that, it will also decrypt/recover any files that were attacked in the first instance.

When you put that technology into context, whether you’re a small or large organisation, can you afford to be without Ransomware protection? Bearing in mind a Ransomware attack could cost an organisation millions of pounds, depending on the size of the organisation and the experience and greed of the hacker. We’re hosting webinars to show you exactly how Sophos Intercept X prevents Ransomware attacks.

Join one of our Sophos Intercept X webinars

Vital strategy considerations for business continuity
Backup and disaster recovery solutions are crucial to businesses that are becoming more reliant on digital and cloud-based platforms. While Datto offers both backup and disaster recovery, it’s important to understand the difference between the two. Nonetheless, they are a key factor when considering whether your business could survive if it was cut offline for hours or days. Do you have a solution in place that only requires a click of a button to get your business back online?

To reiterate, many of us insure ourselves against fires and burglaries, but not if our business goes down. For all we know, a tornado could sweep through the UK tomorrow and many businesses would be waving their white flags. A tornado is a bit farfetched (unless you all recall Michael Fish in 1987…), but it could be anything that disrupts your business – a fire, a flood, electrical failure or even human error – which we now know is the cause of most cyber-attacks.

In a world that is increasingly reliant on technology, it’s getting to the tipping point where cyber security and disaster recovery solutions cannot be ignored anymore. When the worst happens, you need to know your systems and, effectively, your business, can be restored. As the old adage goes, time is money. Are you prepared for the worst?

Join one of our webinars on Datto’s backup and disaster recovery solutions