You are GOING to Get Hacked! An Assume Breach Mentality

Your company takes cybersecurity and IT services very seriously. You’ve got an antivirus, you’ve got firewalls, you’re watching out for phishing e-mails and you’re trying to do everything you can to prevent becoming a victim of a cyber-attack. Unfortunately, no matter how much you try, you can never guarantee you won’t fall victim to a cyber-attack. That’s why it’s important to adopt an assume breach mentality.

No Cybersecurity Solution is 100%

Even if you are doing everything right, no solution is 100%. Cyber criminals have developed powerful tools that give them the ability to launch hundreds of thousands of scans and potential attacks every single day. This massive volume gives them a clear advantage, because with thousands of attempts, even if you block 99.99% of cyber-attacks, that remaining 0.01% is all criminals need to successfully get through your defenses and start causing damage. The reality is criminals only need to be right ONCE out of ten thousand attempts to make a cyber-attack successful.

Isn’t My Business Too Small for A Cyber-Attack? No One Would Ever Target Me.

You see the headlines all the time about major companies falling victim to a massive cyber-attack, costing them millions and millions of dollars. Because of this, many small businesses think “Oh, I’m too small for that to happen to me. No criminal would care about my company!” Unfortunately, that’s just not true.

What is true, is that MOST small businesses aren’t directly targeted by cyber criminals, instead cyber criminals use special tools to constantly scan the internet and send out malicious e-mails looking for victims who appear to be vulnerable. Once their tools have identified a vulnerability in one of your systems or if one of your employees clicks the wrong link, you end up on their radar and they go to work determining the best way they can cause damage, hold your company hostage, or steal your money.

Effectively, cyber criminals are regularly casting a wide net looking for whatever potential victims they can find. Most small businesses become victims of cyber-attacks not because they were specifically targeted, but because they were found to be vulnerable.

What is an “Assume Breach” Mentality?

An Assume Breach mentality is based on the idea that you should prevent as many cyber-attacks as possible, but that you ALSO need systems and processes in place to detect, respond, and recover from any cyber-attacks that you weren’t able to prevent.

• Traditional cybersecurity protection focuses on reducing the LIKELIHOOD of a cyber-attack.
• Assume Breach focuses on reducing the IMPACT of cyber-attacks that get past your defenses.

Think Of it This Way… It’s About Making Cyber-Attacks An Inconvenience, Not A Catastrophe

Imagine this nightmare:

• One of your computers gets infected with ransomware.
• It then spreads to all your other computers, taking your entire business down.
• The cyber criminals then even use your own systems to e-mail ransomware to your customers while pretending to be you.
• All of this is incredibly disruptive and devastating to your business, not to mention your reputation.

Alternatively, imagine this better situation:

• One of your computers gets infected with ransomware.
• It is quickly detected, and that computer is promptly isolated from the rest of your systems which prevents the ransomware from spreading.
• That specific computer will have to be cleaned up by your IT provider.
• The employee that was using the computer will have to use a spare computer for a couple of days until their computer has been cleaned.
• There is no disaster and no company-wide damage.
• The only significant impact was that one employee was inconvenienced.

That’s Assume Breach in action!

Having systems and processes in place so that a successful cyber-attack (such as ransomware on a computer) is detected quickly and its damage is limited to be as small as possible.

You Should Still Try to Prevent Cyber-Attacks

We’re not saying that you shouldn’t try to prevent cyber-attacks, YOU ABSOLUTELY SHOULD!

Every business should work with a trusted IT or Cybersecurity company to ensure they have the proper protection systems in place (like Firewalls, Anti-Malware, E-mail Filtering, etc.).

By putting the right protections in place, you can dramatically reduce the number of successful cyber-attacks against your business. It would be dramatically more manageable responding to only a single cyber-attack that got through instead of potentially hundreds if you had not put the right safeguards in place.

We’re just saying that in the current cybersecurity landscape, since you can’t prevent 100% of cyber-attacks, then you ALSO must be prepared for cyber-attacks that slip past your protections, and that’s what an Assume Breach mentality is about.

Is Your Small Business Prepared for a Cyber Attack?

Every business should have solid cybersecurity protections in place combined with good systems and processes to help detect, respond, and recover from a cyber-attack. Work with your IT provider to ensure you’ve got proper coverage in these areas so that you’re not stuck in a cyber nightmare when the inevitable attack happens.

If You Need Help, Antisyn Is Here to Support The IT and Cybersecurity Needs Of Your Small Business

At Antisyn, we have certified IT and Cybersecurity professionals on staff to help your small businesses plan and manage your IT and Cybersecurity needs. We help businesses reduce IT issues, reduce cybersecurity risks and overall help keep your business running. If you need help with any of this, feel free to reach out!