Small and midsize businesses aren’t immune to cyber threats. They must research and prepare for attacks just as large enterprises would. Unfortunately, smaller companies typically have fewer resources and less talent available to help fortify against attacks.
In March of last year, AI caught a sophisticated, highly targeted cyber-attack exploiting a zero-day vulnerability across multiple businesses. The attack was detected, investigated, and contained by the AI, and the system worked out that it was a completely novel threat. Two weeks later, this campaign was publicly attributed to a Chinese nation-state actor known as APT41. The organizations threatened by the attack included governments entities, critical infrastructure, large enterprises, but also, surprisingly, midsize businesses.
We have entered a new era of cyber threat. If it were measured as a country, cybercrime would be the world’s third-largest economy after the U.S. and China. Midsize businesses are often considered a soft underbelly for cybercriminals. A common misconception exists among cybercriminals that midsize businesses do too little to strengthen their cybersecurity, which makes them an appealing target. As in the case of APT41, they are often targeted as a thoroughfare to higher-value targets, critical systems, and highly classified information. Most are planning to make, or have already begun making, the sweeping, technology-driven organizational changes that define a digital transformation, and a growing majority say these adjustments will soon be essential to their competitiveness.
But the cyber challenge faced by midsize businesses is multi-faceted. They are indeed under-resourced and are particularly affected by a global cyber-skills shortage. Small, or non-existent, security teams are tasked with defending the business from the full range of cyber threats — from sophisticated, novel, and targeted campaigns to very fast moving smash-and-grab attacks — while managing an increasingly distributed workforce and complex digital infrastructure. The challenge extends beyond adequate resources — the threats these organizations face are too fast or too stealthy for humans to contend with and the number of new avenues for hackers to gain entry is growing at a rate too rapid for security teams to monitor.
We Cannot Stop Breaches
The recent Colonial Pipeline attack demonstrated the damaging ripple effect of heavy-handed actions taken to curb ransomware. To contain the breach, operators shut down 5,500 miles of pipeline, which carries 45% of the east coast’s fuel supplies. The incident came shortly after a ransomware attack at Scripps Health, a major healthcare system in San Diego, which led to the suspension of access to its online patient portal and website. Scripps’ network was not fully operational for weeks after the event.
This…
Read More: 4 Cybersecurity Strategies for Small and Midsize Businesses