There are globally 720 million digital hack attempts every 24 hours[1]. 53% of companies with up to 499 employees have experienced a breach in the last year[2]. It’s easy to think because you have a small-to-medium sized business cybercriminals will pass over attacking your company as there’s “not much to steal”, but in today’s digital landscape, every organisation, large or small, is at risk for an attack. And increasingly SMBs are becoming the preliminary focus of attacks[3], with cybercriminals viewing them as soft targets that have less sophisticated security infrastructure and practices, and an inadequate number of trained personnel to manage and respond to threats.
CSO[4] recently found that by using automated attacks, cybercriminals can breach thousands or more small businesses, making the size less of an issue than the network security. And with many SMBs insufficiently prepared for attacks, it’s no surprise that it can take on average 101 days to detect malicious activity[5].
Protection’s cheaper than the cure
Many SMBs are only beginning to realise how attractive they are to cybercriminals. Often, that realisation comes too late: after an attack. Recovering from a cyber attack can be difficult and costly - if not impossible, depending on the nature and scope of the attack.
It can make running a business, especially a small-to-midsized one, a daunting prospect; the Konica Minolta SMB survey[6] highlighted that a third of business leaders stay up at night worrying about security of their data & IT systems. How can you arm yourself with all the tools you need to protect not only your company, but your customers too? And at what cost?
A recent study by the Better Business Bureau (BBB)[7] helps to underscore how SMBs can struggle financially to survive following a severe cyber attack. The BBB asked small business owners in North America, “How long could your business remain profitable if you permanently lost access to essential data?” Only one-third (35%) said that they could remain profitable for more than three months. More than half reported that they would be unprofitable in under one month.
Act like an enterprise, without the overheads
It’s true – cyber attacks are costly, and getting ahead of them requires investment, both financial and resource wise. It will take time to evaluate your systems and work out what is best for you. One way to minimise the threat of cyber attacks is to avoid adding to the number of vendors you manage, and therefore the number of alerts you must respond to.
Whilst larger corporations have the time and budget available to procure the best systems, Konica Minolta knows that SMBs don’t have the resource to find what’s best for them, let alone manage it on a daily basis. Having one integrated system reduces the challenge of having to identify what’s a real threat, and what isn’t.
Workplace Hub, an all-in-one scalable system, offers a robust and reliable infrastructure, giving SMBs a level of IT security and sophistication traditionally associated with large enterprises only. This is because Konica Minolta knows that secure data begins with secure infrastructure, and so it found the best partners to help provide world-leading security for its customers.
The silicon root of trust
Workplace Hub, in both its Hub and Edge solutions, utilise the HPE Gen10 Servers – “the World’s Most Secure Industry Standard Servers”[8]. This bold, but backed-up, claim is founded on their unique silicon root of trust technology built into the hardware, and their belief that infrastructure should be the strongest defence.
The silicon root of trust provides a series of trusted handshakes from lowest level firmware to BIOS and software to ensure a known good state. In HPE’s unique root of trust implementation, the server essential firmware is anchored to the iLO 5 silicon - an immutable fingerprint that verifies all the firmware code is valid and uncompromised. This bond guarantees that only valid and uncompromised firmware code can boot.
Already, those cyber attacks are looking like a thing of the past.
Next-generation monitoring
Remember that statistic of it taking 101 days to detect a cyber attack? As part of the managed Workplace Hub support and service, Konica Minolta constantly monitors and updates the security status. So for those rare situations where an attack gets through Workplace Hub’s robust server, the platform uses the Sophos XG Firewall to provide comprehensive next-generation protection that automatically blocks and responds to threats, exposes hidden risks and monitors what’s happening on your network. And all in real-time.
Konica Minolta is fully equipped to manage the complex task of protecting your data and systems from malicious attacks. So you can check cyber attacks off your worry list. We’ve got you covered.
Learn more at https://workplacehub.konicaminolta.com/solutions/overview
[1] CNBC, 2016
[2] Cisco Cybersecurity special report, 2018
[3] Cyberthreats and solutions for small and midsize businesses, Vistage Research Center, 2018. Developed in collaboration with Cisco and The National Center for the Middle Market. https://www.vistage.com/research-center/business-operations/risk-management/20180503-22912/
[4] Why criminals pick on small business, 2015. http://www.csoonline.com/article/2866911/cyber-attacks-espionage/why-criminals-pick-on-small-business.html
[5] M-Trends 2018, Mandiant
[6] SMB IT pain-point survey for Konica Minolta was conducted in partnership with Opinium, 2018. https://newsroom.konicaminolta.eu/smbs-are-settling-for-technology-that-underdelivers-new-survey-reveals--countering-this-konica-minoltas-workplace-hub-is-set-to-simplify-it-for-customers/
[7] 2017 State of Cybersecurity Among Small Businesses in North America, BBB, 2017. https://www.bbb.org/globalassets/shared/media/state-of-cybersecurity/updates/cybersecurity_final-lowres.pdf
[8] Based on external firm conducting cybersecurity penetration testing of a range of server products from a range of manufactures, May 2017
