Why Cybersecurity is Becoming a Huge Concern for New Startups
Cybersecurity is without a doubt, one of the biggest concerns new startups encounter in the last couple of years. The reason is that data breaches have become a pretty big issue, and they have become much commoner in this period. If you take a look at the situation at the market just a decade ago, you will see that this concern wasn’t the biggest one.
At that time, the biggest issue startups and small businesses had was tax. In just a decade, the situation completely shifted and we can see that cybersecurity is the most important one now in this day and age. In case you are interested in learning more about the concept of IT services, you can learn more here. We can see that this fact has been confirmed in a report done back in 2019.
Bigger companies don’t have this problem since they can protect their data. The reason is that they have much more money at their disposal to invest as they like. But small companies simply cannot invest as much money in the overall security of their data. Nowadays, a lot of data driven businesses show more interest towards setting up a proper cyber security team for their concern, This is the reason, demand for the job has increased in recent times. People tend to learn cyber security skills through platforms like Intellipaat.
Sadly, we can see that many people inside these organizations don’t understand why this is such a big issue. Therefore, we would like to provide you with some of the most important information that can provide you with a proper idea about this issue’s importance. Without further ado, let’s get started.
Why is it So Important?
Sure, we get information when some multi-national company experiences a security breach. The most recent example is when Yahoo suffered this attack. But we cannot see that there is so much information about smaller companies suffering from this kind of attack.
The reason is pretty simple, these organizations have a lot at stake. They just started working and they accumulated some significant data for their business. When they suffer an attack like this, they could lose it all and could be lowered down to bare bones.
Not to mention all the financial damage that can be inflicted on them. In some severe cases, it can ruin the business completely since it can become too much to handle. Therefore, implementing some of the security precautions can serve as an important way of protection that can provide the organization with long-term benefits. It is not something you can plan for the latter stages.
How Do Hackers Target These Businesses?
It doesn’t matter how well-protected the company is, chances are that it has some weak points hackers can breach and exploit to their advantage. As we’ve said, small businesses and startups are simply more prone to these attacks and the consequences are much greater. At the same time, it doesn’t mean that a small business doesn’t have some valuable information that could cost the organization dearly. So, this is the reason why these are targets of hackers in most cases. Let’s take a look at some of the ways these businesses are targeted by hackers.
Customer Information
As we’ve said, even the smallest of businesses have information that can be considered valuable. We are talking about information like transaction history, financial data, social security numbers, and other valuable information.
Third-Party Data
Without a doubt, smaller companies often work with large corporations that outsource some of their work to them. For them to do the best possible job, some of the essential data is shared with them. Not only that, but they are often included in their networks. So, hackers who want certain data can access them by attacking a smaller company.
Stealing Business Ideas
Many startups and small businesses have ideas about how their business can be grown most efficiently. Not only that these ideas can help them grow, they are usually creative and innovative. Of course, they are held as secret. So, many hackers see the opportunity to steal this data and sell it to the highest bidder. While this cannot destroy a company, it can certainly inflict serious damage to its plans.
Why is Cybersecurity Startup Accelerating?
Now, we would like to talk about a couple of reasons why cybersecurity has become a pretty large part of startups and small businesses.
The Introduction of Cloud Security
We can see that cloud security has become a pretty big part of small businesses and startups. The reason being that many of these organizations have cloud technology as a part of everyday operations. We can see that this is a massive trend in this day and age. According to some reports, we can see that 90% of companies have at least one form of cloud-based computing.
Plus, they spend more than $150 bn on these products every year. But this technology has some weaknesses when it comes to its security. Therefore, cloud security has been introduced as one of the ways these weaknesses can be prevented.
IoT
Another huge trend that we would like to talk about is IoT or the Internet of Things. There are a lot of networks and systems that heavily depend on this technology. Some of them cannot be used without it. Just to provide you with an idea about how massive this one is, take a look at the projected value. For example, some reports say that it can reach $75 bn by 2025.
As was the case with cloud computing, IoT is also prone to hacker attacks. What is interesting to know is that they are especially prone to insider attacks. Therefore, it is crucial to encrypt them properly. Sadly, we can see that only 28% of these devices are encrypted. So, it was needed to introduce a cybersecurity measure that can provide essential security to all of these devices.
In Conclusion
Since there are a lot of cyberattacks on small businesses and startups, experts have tried to find ways they can protect their valuables. Here, we’ve provided you with some of the most important aspects of why this is such an important topic in the world of business. We hope you will find this article of ours useful.