Every day, businesses face ransomware and other lurking cyber dangers. Much of the attention has been focused on critical infrastructure: dams, power plants, utilities, and election systems. But for small to medium size businesses (SMBs), essential infrastructure backbones can often be the weakest links, and hackers know how to target them. 

Most ransomware attacks don’t grab headlines 

A report warns of the dangers to small and medium businesses and says that most ransomware attacks are not headline-grabbers. 

The report also highlights various types of attacks and their impacts on small businesses as well as offers actionable solutions for organizations such as: 

• Disable macros: Implement execution prevention by disabling macro scripts from Microsoft Office files transmitted via email. 
• Set up network segmentation: Implement robust network segmentation to help reduce the spread of ransomware if it does get into your system. 
• Remove unused or unauthorized applications: Investigate any unauthorized software, particularly remote desktop, or remote monitoring, which could be signs of compromise. 
• Enhance web application and API protection services: Secure your web applications from malicious hackers and bad bots by enabling web application and API protection services, including distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection. 
• Reinforce access control on backups: Backup should be offline and cloud credentials should vary from normal credentials. 

Some verticals are at higher risk 

SMBs having a target on their backs, some verticals are more susceptible than others. 

If a business is part of an ecosystem, that makes them more vulnerable. A printing house, for example, that only produces wedding invitations and graduation announcements likely wouldn’t be as appealing to a hacker. Rather, a printing house that prints deposit envelopes for banks would be more attractive to hackers as they can move laterally up to the financial institution. They become part of the financial ecosystem and therefore more vulnerable. 

The entire web of critical ecosystems is vulnerable to nation and state-sponsored cyberattacks. Those are the threat actors most likely to be going after infrastructure targets. 

Cybersecurity budgets are not keeping pace with threats 

A new survey by a San Diego-based security firm asserts that too many companies still view cybersecurity expenditures as a luxury – until they get hacked. 

The top three challenges identified by SMBs in North America were: 

• An inability to keep up with the latest cybersecurity threats (54 percent) 
• Keeping up with the latest cybersecurity approaches and technologies (50 percent) 
• Budget limitations/lack of investment in cybersecurity (49 percent) 

Small to medium-sized businesses are what we know best at Access Tech. We have been helping SMBs for decades get their security systems set up and upgraded to protect their data, all without breaking the bank. Don’t let cybersecurity be an afterthought for your company. Contact us at Access Tech for a free security assessment. 

Read the original post here.