As the year winds down, it’s time to start looking at 2024 and what the year could mean for local organizations. It’s likely that most businesses are putting together their operational plans and marketing budgets, and all of that is certainly important, but there are some major situations at play that could cause your business to suffer from major losses and rack up huge expenses if decision-makers aren’t prepared for it.
You might notice that we’re being sensationalist in today’s blog. If you are a typical reader, you know we tend not to be, but this is important. We hope that we still have your attention and if you are a business owner, manager, or even an employee with a vested interest in the place where you work, we hope you take this seriously.
The truth is that every year is worse than the last when it comes to cybercrime, and by a significant amount. In 2021, ransomware alone cost victims around $20 billion. In 2024, that number is expected to be $42 billion. This isn’t a new statistic—we share this sort of stuff on our blog often. The problem is that human beings don’t think in billions.
Instead, let’s put you in a room with four other people. Each of you represents a different company. If you share a building or plaza with four other businesses, picture that instead just to really get a sense for how impactful what I’m about to tell you is.
Five people, five businesses.
In 2024, four of you will be hacked. Four of the five businesses represented in the room will have a cybercriminal, scammer, or cybercriminal organization attempt to steal, change, or breach important company data.
If that doesn’t punctuate the severity of cybersecurity, we don’t know what else will.
Go ahead and do a Google search for “loses $40k from hack.”
You will find hundreds of thousands of results, often different stories from different parts of the world. Right now, I’m seeing several from just this past month (keep in mind, Google searches custom-tailor your search results based on your search history, location, and a bunch of other factors, so most people don’t get the exact same results).
The point is, this is just one random number, and there are tons of reported situations where people or organizations were scammed out of a large sum of money. Look up “loses $20k from hack” or “hackers shut down business” and you’ll find plenty of coverage where this has happened to actual businesses and individuals across the country. This is a growing problem, and yet people generally aren’t taking their own security seriously, and while many businesses aren’t taking the proper steps either, most modern threats target the weakest link, which is the end user.
See the problem?
If we aren’t growing a security-first culture within our organizations, this problem is only going to get worse, and each year you are more and more likely to suffer from an attack.
Often, we’ll encourage business owners to give us a call or set up a consultation so we can have a one-on-one to help your business take advantage of your IT or secure your business from threats. Let’s forget about that for a moment. We’re not trying to sell you anything or get you to meet us or anything. For now, let’s just get you and the people you work with a stream of educational information about cybersecurity. No salespeople, no follow-up—if you made it this far, just help us raise more awareness.
At the end of this blog post is a tag that says Security. When you click on it, it will take you to all of the posts on our blog that fall under this topic. That also gives you a sharable page you can give to others.
Click on Security below, and save that link as a bookmark, and visit it each week. Make a reminder in your calendar, if you have to. Visit that link, and go through a post or two, or check out the new content.
On top of that, we ask that you please share this out with your employees, colleagues, and anyone that you do business with. We’ll dedicate time to continue building helpful content that educates business owners and decision makers, as well as their staff, to be better protected from threats to help your business avoid becoming a statistic.
Together, we can raise awareness to keep the businesses in our community safe.
