Threat intelligence is, or should be, at the top of any business owner’s priority list. Your intellectual property, client information, financial records, team contacts – your entire business operations – are stored within your network, and the last thing you want to do is to put any of your data at risk.

The reality for most small to medium-sized businesses in Canada is that they can’t afford to hire a full-time threat intelligence team. However, a new Kaspersky report shows just how critical cyber-security is today in North America, which is quickly becoming a favourite target for security breaches.

“Based on a recent global survey of more than 4,000 business representatives from 25 countries, nearly half (44 percent) of North American responding firms with 1,000 or more employees suffered four or more data breaches in the past 12 months. That’s double the amount that businesses worldwide experienced (20 percent).”

Respondents to the Kaspersky report were asked to explain where they thought data leakages occurred; they blamed:

1. Careless/uninformed employees
2. Phishing/social engineering
3. Losses through mobile devices
4. Accidental loss of hardware
5. Viruses/malware/trojans with exploits

The Kaspersky report concluded, “We are confident that 99 percent of security threats can be repelled by highly efficient, automated, intelligent software technologies. The remaining one percent requires not technology, but a new mindset of employees.”

How you can protect your network

If your company can’t hire a full-time cyber-security team, it doesn’t mean that your network needs to be a sitting duck. Targeted attacks and issues related to cloud services reveal that an integrated security system is needed in most companies as well as training, management and ongoing monitoring.

Outsourcing your IT security with a company such as Keystone will boost your threat protection after a thorough and continuous analysis of your network’s weak points. We can help your business implement technologies that prevent widespread cyber threats and install intelligent systems to analyze your business’s workflow to help detect where targeted attacks may occur. With ongoing monitoring and management, our technicians can quickly resolve any issues should they arise.

At Keystone Technologies, we will also look at your security awareness and training processes to ensure your employees understand the importance of how and why to follow best practices when it comes to your network security protocol.

For more details about how we can protect your business from cyber-threats, contact us today.