The Choices

$350.00 per customer record. Forty percent of business lost.
That’s a recent estimate of what it costs those in the medical profession who have their networks hacked into.

$1050.00 repair costs. Partial or complete data loss.
That’s a recent estimate of what it costs the average business to repair a single computer when it becomes infected with malware.

Small business can’t afford their own IT department. The guys who wear black hats know this and make them a primary target. A hardware store in nowhere North Dakota? Yes. We’ve seen it. The question is, can you afford to be hacked?

For years businesses have relied on the fix-it-when-it-breaks philosophy. And for many years, that worked well enough. Hackers were merely out to prove that they could break into systems. The fixes were usually easy to implement: the malware could be removed, the damage repaired and life would go on. Today, it’s not about some hacker proving his skills. Today it’s about money. It’s about your customer’s data.

You won’t even know they’re there. Using worms, trojans, back doors or a host of other techniques, hackers will access your systems and gain access to all of your data. They can record your keystrokes, take screenshots of what you’re doing, access your webcam and upload and download files any time they like. Your customer’s data will often be sold to the highest bidder on the dark web. Or worse, you will know they’re there. All of your data will be encrypted and a ransom demand will be made. They’ll instruct you to send hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of cryptocurrency to decrypt your data. And even then, there’s no guarantee they will when you do pay them.

At the risk of using an old cliché, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.“