Unfortunately, cyber attacks are becoming more frequent and common, and SMEs are the main victims. Here in this article we are going to know why.
To get to the point and explain it in a simple and fast way. The main objective of cyber attacks is almost always economic. What the attackers do, explained in easy terms, is to “kidnap” the company’s confidential data and documents, and ask for a large sum of money for their ransom. This kidnapping is usually done by “disabling” the files, with a type of virus called “RANSOMWARE”.
What Ransomware does is encrypt files, making them impossible to read or use. A company’s entire critical information set can be completely locked and rendered unusable; this can be catastrophic, leading to critical losses that may even seriously jeopardize the company’s continued existence.
To recover these documents, attackers demand exorbitant sums from their victims—amounts that can sometimes drive the company into bankruptcy. Recovering from a typical attack costs an average of around €35,000 and entails approximately one week of downtime.
Police generally advise against ever giving in to such extortion demands, unless the amount involved is very low.
Well, for a simple reason:
They have some ability to handle money (cyber attackers are interested in a victim with money), but they also do not usually have enough money to allocate large resources to cybersecurity. In general, they all have some measures in place in this regard, but on average far fewer than very large companies, which possess extensive security measures that make them nearly impenetrable.
That said, all companies—especially SMEs—are advised not to neglect cybersecurity and to invest in it as much as possible.
