October is Cybersecurity month, appropriately landing at the height of “spooky season.” The constant surge of cybersecurity attacks across industries and businesses of all sizes is spooking business leaders everywhere. So far this year, 2,200 attacks have occurred daily—every 39 seconds. Here in the United States, a data breach costs, on average, more than $9 million annually. The seemingly endless influx will cost businesses $8 trillion in 2023.
Global cyber attacks jumped 8% this year in Q2 alone, the highest total in years. Retail, manufacturing, financial, healthcare, nonprofit, education, government, and legal sectors continue to surge. Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a perfect time to elevate critical topics and risks, spurring more businesses to act in their best interest.
Cybersecurity Month is a Reminder to Shield Your Business
In the next two years, 60% of all organizations across industries will assess cybersecurity risks as a critical and decisive in handling third-party transactions and business relationships. Investors, primarily venture capitalists, increasingly evaluate cybersecurity risk as a crucial factor in exploring new opportunities.
And while experts predict that online communications will be more secure in the next five years to reduce network-based threats. However, now and in the future, the most significant risk and obstacle for businesses is human error as phishing advancements and incidents continue to escalate.
Cybersecurity Awareness Month is the Perfect Time to Act
Keep reading for a few ways to make this Cybersecurity Awareness Month Count.
1. Implement Cybersecurity Awareness Training.
Over 70% of employees fall for phishing attempts. Scam emails have a six-time higher click-through rate than
actual marketing eBlasts. While your teams are your most important investment, they are also your greatest vulnerability point. Phishing costs businesses up to $15 million on average. Meanwhile, more hackers are accelerating business email compromise (BEC) attacks with WormGPT AI, smart phishing emails. It’s time to empower your employees as a powerful first line of defense rather than your greatest security vulnerability. That mandates cybersecurity awareness training. Educating your workforce is paramount protecting your business and qualifying for and maintaining cybersecurity insurance plans.
The right cybersecurity awareness program helps employees identify future phishing, malware, and brand or impersonation attempts of influential business members. Regular monthly training keeps your business members informed on the latest cyber threats and how to spot them before alerting your IT team.
2. Leverage Multifactor Authentication and Password Management.
Password stats are this Cybersecurity Month. That’s because this year weak passwords fuel 30% of data breaches, and two-thirds of Americans use one password across several online and application accounts. Shockingly, the most common password is still 123456. Almost 60% of users incorporate easily searchable birthdays and names in passwords. Nearly half of Americans have shared streaming services, email accounts, social media platforms, and eCommerce logins.
Meanwhile, 44% of internet users only reset passwords when they forget them. McAfee-recommends resetting passwords every three months.
41% of users manage passwords across 25 sites and apps or more on average.
Password management and multifactor authentication empower users to use various passwords across sites and apps without issues and streamline password updates. MFA makes it more challenging for bad actors to compromise accounts even after determining a user’s password since verifications are often sent to smartphones via text and apps for confirmation.
3. Avoid business downtime, costs, and other disruptions with a backup and recovery strategy.
Cybersecurity Month is an excellent reminder to prevent future business fallout. There’s a lot of buzz about
the proactive preventative measures to build your business cybersecurity posture. However, you still have to prepare for the worst. Partnering with the right MSP on your backup and recovery strategy can help you recover files and apps sooner, keeping your business operating and online.
A backup strategy helps you qualify for and maintain cybersecurity insurance, avoid regulatory suits, and preserve a positive customer experience. An experienced managed services provider can guide you through backup approaches tailored to your organization’s business challenges, goals, requirements and regulations, and needs. Understanding evolving immutable and mutable backup approaches and how they can benefit your organization is critically important.
Backup and recovery solutions help mitigate the fallout risks inherent to remote work and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies. Growing natural disasters are another concern for businesses, and there’s still confusion about whether archive capabilities built into Microsoft 365 and other platforms are enough—they aren’t.
Take Action this Cybersecurity Month
Cybersecurity Awareness Month is the perfect time to assess the latest approaches. Don’t wait for a devastating security breach. Contact Fruth Group’s cybersecurity experts for a zero-commitment assessment of your security posture and recommendations for bolstering protection and resilience.
