Post-Covid reboot of SMBs to be relaunched!

Post-Covid Reboot of Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs) To Be Relaunched!

Post-Covid reboot of SMBs - French companies of all sizes are finally seeing the light at the end of the Covid pandemic tunnel. They are preparing to return to a normal business cycle. Normal?

The recent period has changed many things, particularly for SMBs, which have sometimes had to convert to a different work pattern altogether, adjusting to new infrastructure and new software to pursue their business activities.

In this vast change, SMBs are not entirely isolated. The French government has set aside a massive €40 billion direct or indirect support program. These funds will enable companies to engage their digital transition, strengthen their capacity for innovation, and accelerate their development or recruit new skills. One of the objectives of the plan is to digitize 1 million small businesses by the end of the five-year term.

SMBs in the firing line

According to Syntec Numérique, SMBs are the target of 77% of cyberattacks. Cybermailveillance.gouv.fr recorded a 400% increase in phishing during the first week of the lock-down, as well as a 400% increase in the use of its services.

Among the top requests for assistance from businesses on this platform: 19% for computer system hacks, 17% for ransomware attacks, and 10% for online account hacks. As of April 2020, Google had also reported more than 18 million malware attacks and phishing attempts related to COVID-19 worldwide daily. However, according to this institution, two thirds of French companies consider that cyberthreat risk is low or insignificant.

The cost of cyber-attacks targeting SMBs is estimated at €700 million per year. According to the insurance firm Hiscox, small companies with 10 to 49 employees seem particularly vulnerable to server compromise or credentials hacking (mentioned by 41% of these companies against 37% on average).

Small businesses are the most affected, in terms of the number of losses in a proportional way to the size of the company. For micro-businesses with less than 10 employees, the estimated median cost of all attacks this year 2021 was just over €7,273.

Some companies faced losses of almost €300,000. Sometimes the consequences are even worse: a German service company suffered breaches representing a cost of €430,909 per employee.

PLATINUM

Innovators

Security: an investment for the future

Small business leaders frequently prioritize employment, results, and the business sustainability and tend to concentrate less on cybersecurity issues. However, it is clear that performance and growth objectives cannot be achieved without a solid and secure IT infrastructure. The best option for a company is to invest in a security solution that meets its requirements.

Yet about 80% of SMBs in France do not have a cybersecurity plan to ward off massive cyberattacks. This staggering proportion also includes those companies that risk bankruptcy 3 months after a cyber incident…

Small businesses must change their vision and realize that cybersecurity is a real opportunity for development, because it guarantees them, among other benefits, a permanent competitiveness level, a certain flexibility of organization and, in general, a greater security. A survey conducted by IFOP on behalf of F-Secure, a Finnish security solutions provider, indicated last May that companies were far from addressing these issues.

Only 60% of those questioned had invested or planned to invest at least 1,000 euros in IT security, all weapons combined (IoT - antivirus - desktop security). Only 46% of professionals had invested in the security of their laptops and desktops. However, antivirus software is not enough and does not provide global protection for the SMB.

SMBs are frequently unaware of the risks associated with a cyber-attack and consider that protecting their information systems is not as critical for their reputation as for larger companies whose difficulties are exposed in the press. In short, the SMB sometimes imagines they can fly under the cyber attacker’s radar.

Solutions for spending within your means

However, there are solutions without spending a fortune that can protect the company from a real risk. It is not a question of just outsourcing IT that could lead to a loss of control over what represents the company’s greatest asset: its data.

Wooxo offers protection against the major risks related to cybercrime without requiring a significant investment and proposes a complete package for SMB cybersecurity in the form of an appliance. Along with associated services, Wooxo secures and restores all data in the event of an attack or any other serious incident. The aim is to guarantee continuously high availability for all servers, desktops, laptops and remote workstations.

It is possible to back up locally and/or externally to European datacenters or to a second appliance. In the case of local storage, accessing data is immediate and restore times do not depend on Internet speed.

Wooxo’s appliance, also known as a “security appliance”, provides maximum protection against the frequent risks of fire, theft, or breakdowns. In addition, a predictive anti-malware solution, equipped with artificial intelligence, anticipates, and prevents cyberattacks.

Not a significant investment but one that avoids significant consequences!