Last Updated on September 15, 2022 by admin
Businesses of today cannot operate without information technology. However, as IT advances in leaps and bounds, so too does the risk of cyberattacks. That’s why small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) need to safeguard themselves with strong data security solutions provided by knowledgeable managed IT services providers (MSPs).
2021’s cybersecurity by the numbers
Internal deficiencies like improperly configured systems and the proliferation of external threats such as credential stuffing, ransomware, and social engineering are some reasons why the number of SMBs falling prey to cyberattacks has increased dramatically over time. In fact, as per Verizon’s 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report, 20% of data breach victims were SMBs. Among them, 53% took a week or more to detect breaches.
Moreover, the Cost of a Data Breach Report 2021 by IBM indicates that data breach costs skyrocketed from $3.86 million to $4.24 million in 2021. This means it’s past time for SMBs to take cybersecurity seriously. To effectively protect your business against cyberattacks and show customers that it’s safe to do business with you, you must partner up with an accredited MSP.
Why outsource cybersecurity to an MSP?
Teaming up with an MSP is the best way you can protect your business against malicious cyberthreats. MSPs provide a wide variety of advanced proactive IT security measures, such as the following:
- 24/7/365 monitoring – Cybercriminals are sneaky and will try to attack you when you least expect it. However, this means nothing if your MSP partner expects attacks all the time. They’ll monitor your systems and networks without pause to identify and neutralize potential threats as soon as possible.
- Real-time threat mitigation – This IT solution detects and quashes suspicious activities as soon as they threaten the security of your business data, thereby minimizing the damage these could cause.
- Data backup and encryption – Creating and storing data backups allows you to restore your data if it is ever lost. Data encryption, on the other hand, makes information unreadable for everyone except authorized users. Backing up your data and then encrypting both the original data and the backup ensures that your business is secure against data loss and data theft.
- Firewalls – In construction, a firewall is a structure built between buildings to prevent fire from reaching them. In IT, a firewall is a network device that acts as a barrier between your company network and the bad things pervading the internet. The firewall monitors incoming traffic to keep external threats like malware and hackers from stealing sensitive data like employee information, customer records, and intellectual property.
- Identity and access management (IAM) – IAM helps businesses create user accounts and set access permissions based on what they need to fulfill their roles.
- Mobile device management (MDM) – MDM allows your IT team to enroll and configure every device to be used for company business, be that device issued by the company or personally owned by its user.
MSPs can spot and strengthen weak areas in your IT infrastructure, which may include your cybersecurity system. Once they address your security issues, you’ll gain a robust business continuity and disaster recovery strategy, faster network speed, and greater uptime rates.
More than these, you’ll get a reliable team of cybersecurity experts who’ll usually resolve issues before you even become aware of these. All in all, cybersecurity solutions and other managed services have helped countless businesses like yours. Learn more about managed IT services Orange county today.
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