Despite these trends, too many firms are still adopting passive, reactive policies, only reacting after an attack has happened. The question to ask yourself and your board of directors is whether you would be happy to leave the contents of your home uninsured, and only react if you had a burglary.
Think of your cyber security strategy as an insurance policy. While the best tools used to be affordable only to large enterprises, they are now much more accessible to SMEs. Given this, the challenge becomes how to bring it onto your management team’s agenda.
As a highly digital economy, it is vital to be at the top of your game in the UK market. Whether your customers are B2B or B2C, evolving customer demands, operational efficiency, and the need to differentiate your products or services means IT needs to be at the centre of everything you do.
To do so, the limited IT resources you have cannot be consumed by tactical activities such as cyber security defences. Bailing water out of a leaking boat is a guaranteed way to ensure you never have the time or focus to drive new digital products or experiences for your customers.
By outsourcing “keeping the lights on” IT tasks such as cyber security, internal IT teams can be put to much more strategic use to innovate, create and develop. In the digital age, the reality is that every business initiative is an IT initiative – or at the very least needs involvement from IT.
Although the most common link is with paying a ransom demand, there are many ancillary costs associated to a cyber security incident – so much so that the response to the incident often proves much more expensive than preventing them in the first place.
And that assessment does not factor in the great intangible of reputational damage - the loss of public trust. In short, if your customers lose trust in you, they will leave.
Not only that, but it is estimated that only 35% of SMBs could remain profitable for more than three months without access to vital data.
To compound the issue, there is a recognised cyber security skills shortage in the UK. This makes it difficult to hire in specialist cyber security professionals, and as a result it can mean IT generalists without specific cyber skills trying to plug the gap.
More than 90% of successful hacks and data breaches start with phishing scams. By focusing on this threat and eliminating it, you can significantly reduce the cyber security risk factor.
By adopting cyber security as a managed service, you can focus on what matters to your without worrying about managing the burden of day-to-day IT infrastructure. With NetUtils managed services, you gain access to their highly trained, certified and experienced technical team who will manage, review and maintain your critical infrastructure so you don’t have to.
Four ways managed cyber security services trump in-house recruitment:
Read more about IT Security as a Managed Service in this guide from NetUtils.
Five tips to ensure your data is safe - in or out of the office.
Do you think you’re covered?
Cyber preparedness insights from a serving police superintendent
O365 and Antivirus can't cover it all
Password problems will still plague every organisation
Counting the cost of cyber security
Now What?
on The Road to Cyber Resilience
How is 2022 going so far?
Considerations for the SME
Request your FREE scan today
Follow our handy checklist
“Does it really work?”
Complex topic explained
Guide for owner or employee
Phishing By Industry Report 2021: Benchmarking Report
What it is and how to deal with it
Cloud-based cybersecurity awareness training
A CTO’s view
What’s actually going on in your business?
Email communications the use of geoblocking
De-risking the human factor
Get smart with Passwords!
Productivity and security behind the scenes
Share this story
Save time, money and resource with our cost-effective managed cyber security platform; keep your users safe, protect your core infrastructure, enhance your security and mitigate risk against cyber crime.
Download the Brochure
Ashok Thomas, CEO of leading managed security company, Net Utils, talks candidly about the pro’s and con’s for SME’s thinking about taking a managed security service into their business
Download the eBookLet us know what you think about the article.
Let us know what you think about the article.
We're a community where IT security buyers can engage on their own terms.
We help you to better understand the security challenges associated with digital business and how to address them, so your company remains safe and secure.