The Expert Podcast

Okay, here's a very troubling statistic from Inc magazine talking about cyber attacks. Not only are cyber attacks financially devastating to a company, but they may set off a chain of events a domino effect where they may set off a chain of events a domino effect where it could destroy your company and close your company. 60% of small businesses fold within 6 months of a cyber attack. That's more than half of 60% of companies. If you have a cyber attack, ransomware hacking, you get worse than 50% odds that you'll still be in business in less than half a year. This is very troubling. How does this happen? How does a cyber attack create a closed business? Well, what happens is that there's a lot of layers to the expense and the uh impacts on a business.

First when you get that Cyber attack you walk in your door on a Monday morning and all your computers are locked up now you're out of business so all your employees are scrambling Ling around they don't know what to do they can't log in you can't talk to customers you can't sell stuff you can't get accounts receivable so for that first day or two everybody's in chaos your employees are getting demoralized how hard do you have to work to keep your employees motivated comfortable confident the salespeople with your customers and that's all destroyed you don't have the time to work with the employees to keep their morale up because you're dealing with the security problem you have to find out where it came from that in itself in many cases takes 10 to $5,000 just to find out where this problem exists or where it came from then you have to start undoing it maybe get your backups maybe get your it people involved maybe the attack is still happening they're infiltrating further into your network

The next thing that's going to happen is even after a few days or a week when you get your systems back online if you can or you rebuild them from scratch which is a lot of of times what you have to do rebuild your customer list your accounting your accounts payable receivables now it's almost like starting over in business remember think about that 60% this is directly related to the statistic that's often quoted 60% of new businesses fail within the first couple years well you're essentially a new business now because you have to start over from scratch the only downside is now you have all of your existing expenses your employees your rent your overhead small business startup usually starts out lean with very few uh fixed expenses you're starting a new business from scratch plus you have maybe lose some employees some good people that don't have confidence maybe you lose some clients and customers even vendors can have some problems because they're worried about getting paid it's a domino effect it's a chain reaction

So what you want to have to prevent this is some kind of active monitoring of your networks and you might say well my it people do that they probably do the problem with cyber attacks is they're changing every week these hackers are coming up with new creative novel approaches to get into your network every single week that's their business just like you come out with new marketing new products every week they come out with new things every week too to be able to find out how to get into your business so your it people would have to be every single day learning the new techniques the active monitoring you want is from a holistic point of view a company that's out there seeing the attacks every week with other companies because when the attack hits your company it's going to be the first time but that attack has probably been used other places in the past weeks and months cyber insurance is one way to do that most cyber insurance companies that will write your business will put active monitoring into your company another way to do it is to sign up for some uh preventive outside thirdparty Services because again your it people are really good they're good at creating your networks but they can't know about every attack that's happening to every business around the world where there are Consulting companies and insurance companies that do this for a living the other thing to do is have a immediate response protocol in place so as soon as you have an attack if you know what to do step one do this step two do that and you have a chain of events a checklist to go through that'll help keep your business from being one of the 60% that fails and one of the 40% that survives and cyber Insurance also does that they have a response team that as soon as you call them up and say look we had a a hack on our system they step in and they do the response so again we're biased we're cyber insurance company but we're telling you what the benefits are whether you do it through insurance or another way have that incident response drilled in place because if it happens you don't have time to be sitting around thinking what do I do now who do I call how do I get my receivables coming back in how do I get my um access to my bank transfers you can't be thinking about that when the attack is happening because if you're doing it then it's going to be too late and there'll be 10 things for you to do dealing with your employees your customers your your um finances your money transfers cash flow um getting your system back up you're going to have five or six fires to put out at once and you these are all things you've not have to do before so you won't have the experience to do all of these maybe one or two you have but not all at the same time and not to this level so having some somebody on your side somebody that has your back can be helpful to prevent a Cyber attack and if you're in the middle of one right now get some good advice Legal Financial technical to keep it from being a uh runaway spiral that puts you out of business and think about all the employees and people that depend upon you and your business for their income your employees families your vendors even your customers depend on you and you depend on yourself you don't want that leave that the chance.