|
Why Cyber Criminals Are Targeting Small Organizations More Frequently
Back when the use of computers and internet was fairly new, the idea out there was that small and medium-sized organizations were really under the radar. The focus of bad actors was placed upon the large companies who brought in all this new technology and had access to plenty of resources. New statistics show that this simply isn't the case anymore and smaller organizations need to be more prepared than ever when it comes to cybersecurity.
What Are Some Statistics?
There are some key statistics to keep in mind that really drive home this point. For example, Verizon reports that, as of 2021, 46% of successful breaches were at businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees. That's up from just 34% only a half a decade earlier. They reports 61% of SMBs were targeted and that 82% of ransomeware attacks were focused on these same organizations (including 37% of those organizations being fewer than 100 people).
When it comes to email, the findings indicated that the highest concentration of malicious emails were sent to smaller organizations (defined as under 250) and that the more tailored social engineering attacks occurred 3.5x as frequently for users in these organizations as they did in larger ones. These are all trends that continue to rise and have done so at an increasing rate.
Why Are These Trends Continuing?
Back just two issues of Tech Talk News (Issue 11 - which can be found on our website) covered how many organizations simply cannot find cybersecurity professionals, particularly small and medium sized ones. That's the top reason for these trends continuing to increase - the bad actors are also aware of the shortages and have begun to focus more and more on organizations who are less likely to have any cybersecurity professionals that have put up safeguards.
Similarly, the use of ransomware has become more likely as the bad actors have discovered these smaller organizations have a lower likelihood of having strong endpoint protection and effective backup rotations deployed, allowing for a higher success ratio and the ability to ask for a larger amount of money for data that cannot be otherwise restored.
With the emails, it comes back to the users frequently having less training and experience with these sorts of malicious attacks at the smaller organizations in addition to the fact that there may not be any additional spam filters which are commonplace for large organizations - meaning the emails are more likely to reach their target.
All of these points go back to a similar point as the last issue of this newsletter: the importance of an IT partner for small and medium organizations is only increasing. If your organization has any questions on your IT setup (be it about backups, antivirus, firewalls, email, or even just what things you might want to consider planning for future implementation), please feel free to contact our offices and we'll be happy to answer your questions.
| 
