There are so many things that we are unsure of in the future. One which is particularly important for businesses is cybersecurity. Businesses need to take it upon themselves to be more cyber aware. They need to be aware of what the main risks are and unfortunately a lot of people don’t yet understand them.
Over the last 12 months the “Cybersecurity Business Connect and Protect” initiative has been run on the Central Coast to bring cybersecurity awareness to small and medium businesses. It was found that, what businesses don’t know about cybersecurity could fill a warehouse! And that knowing is only half the battle, we need to be taking appropriate action to protect ourselves as well.
91% of all cyber attacks start with email. So you could be facing a huge risk to your cybersecurity if your email is not secure. Another thing that was found was that we are moving to the cloud. We’re starting to see a big shift to cloud with the hybrid workplace that many businesses are employing of late, which shifts a lot of the cybersecurity heavy work to the service provider. Even though this is the case, this still doesn’t take away the requirement for small and medium businesses to be able to practice cybersecurity best practices within their own walls. If you implement these best practices, you’re going to elevate yourself above the low hanging fruit which is what the hackers tend to prey on.
When we say businesses need to be more cyber aware, we’re not talking about just looking at the evening news and seeing what’s reported because typically that’s not going to be focused on small medium business. Businesses really need to be engaging with the cybersecurity community and becoming more upskilled within their business. To do that you need to be getting onto the dark web and looking at hacking forums. You need to be subscribing to security podcasts, be a part of their cybersecurity community. If you can’t do that, you need to be engaging a person or a company that is doing that to have that proactive approach to securing your business.
The federal government has what they call the essential aid and a part of that is they say that you should be looking at your cyber security defences every 6 to 12 months. So cybersecurity protection is not just a one and done thing.
Cybersecurity is changing all the time so a constant review of your cybersecurity defences is required. It’s really difficult to predict what’s going to happen with Digital Technology in the future but cybersecurity issues are not going to ever go away so it is important to not only be cyber aware but to take action on giving yourself the best protection you can against any cybersecurity risks in your business.
This blog is based predominantly on the information given by Michael Trimblett during his appearance on series five at The Future of Business Summit – Life on Mars 2022. Episode One: Digital Technology and Hybrid Workforces – Life on Future Earth.