Cyber Security Insight: Protecting Your Business from Digital Disaster

Hello and welcome to SMB Matters.

I’m your host, Timothy Torres, chief security officer for TriNet. This podcast series takes a close look at the latest news and trends on a variety of topics related to running a successful small and medium-size business. Today and in future episodes, I’ll be talking about some basic measures that can be taken to protect businesses from cyberattacks.

Now, for a little background. As chief security officer of TriNet, I’m passionate about what we do and how security enables TriNet to propel our customers in fulfilling their mission. As our CEO, Burton Goldfield often says, “Our customers are out there every day working on solutions to clean the air, find cures for cancer, transform communities and even research new medicine to maintain and preserve human dignity.”

These are the things that inspire me and our incredible team and here’s how security plays a role. In this digital age, we are all reliant on technology platforms and information sharing. Yet, unfortunately, we’ve seen a rapid explosion in cyberattacks that are disrupting businesses and individuals. The super majority of these cyberattacks are pure play compromise as a result of human failure—which is to say phishing or social engineering. And when you intersect business and society that rely on technology from a critical infrastructure or a banking, communications and even operations standpoint, we end up with a cybersecurity problem that isn’t going anywhere but up. And so this is why I’m passionate and working at TriNet in service of our customers. We take security seriously and are here to serve our colleagues, customers and communities.

So let me lay some groundwork for future conversations. So you may ask, Timothy, what is the real cybersecurity problem? Well, I firmly believe it starts with awareness of the actual conditions of why we have a problem in the first place and how it’s becoming a growing issue with SMBs. So first of all, the attack surface is very soft. It’s data rich. It’s lucrative for cybercriminals and it’s continued to expand. Cybercrime is over a $1 trillion economy and if it were a country, it would be the third largest economy behind the United States and China.

Now, over 90% of businesses are represented by SMBs where we have over 30 million SMBs with fewer than 500 employees. Small to medium size businesses don’t typically have the resources and talent to institute an enterprise-level security program. So as a result, over 40% of cyberattacks target these small to medium size businesses because they’re so reliant on technology and they don’t have the security needed to protect them. A significant amount of SMBs is even go out of business within six months after a major cyberattack.

Unfortunately, there was over a 400% increase this past year in SMB cyber breaches. And all the while, over two-thirds of SMB leaders in a recent poll stated that they don’t believe their business is susceptible to a data breach. So going back to the fundamentals, I believe that the problem that exists in today’s era around cybersecurity starts with just acknowledging the fundamentals. Organizations aren’t prepared. Many, SMBs haven’t conducted a risk assessment to understand the line of business that they’re in and what those top risks from a security standpoint mean.

They haven’t yet set up some common best practices around maybe even having cyber security insurance, having an incident response plan, relying on a managed detection and response service, or even having good hygiene around vulnerability management and locking down your systems. Many SMBs don’t know where their data is stored, who has access to it and what would happen if they were compromised by ransomware.

So these are the things that we want you to be thinking about over the series of these podcasts to begin provoking thoughts that lead to actions and that can help raise the tide for everyone. In future discussions, we will go into depth about cybersecurity insurance. We’ll even talk about ChatGPT and the role that AI plays in this modern era.

So, thanks again for listening to SMB Matters. If you enjoyed this show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast and please share it with your colleagues. Or make sure you subscribe to our newsletter at TriNet.com/Insights. Also, if you have any thoughts on what you just heard and want to continue the conversation, please feel free to drop us a line at SMBMatters@TriNet.com.

SMB Matters by TriNet is committed to providing small and medium-size businesses with timely and relevant insights. Thank you again and see you in our next episode.

Legal Disclaimer:

This podcast is for educational purposes only. With decades of experience supporting small and medium-size businesses, TriNet has unique insight into HR best practices for businesses. TriNet does not provide legal, tax or accounting advice. The materials in this podcast and the options and opinions expressed herein may not apply to your company or scenario, so you should consult with your own advisors on how best to proceed. Reproduction in part or in whole is not permitted without express written authorization from TriNet.