Over the last couple of years, big data breaches have been front page news: from Target to Anthem, to the White House to the Office of Personnel Management.
However, thousands of cyberattacks targeting small- and mid-sized businesses, most of whom aren’t equipped to deal with them, go unreported.
According to Timothy Francis, enterprise lead for cyber insurance at Travelers, there are 34,529 known computer security incidents each day in the U.S and the majority (62 percent) involve breaches of small and mid-sized businesses.
Most of these Main Street firms lack the technology and capability to implement advanced systems to protect their data and quickly respond to a cyber incident to limit the fallout. Experts warn that such attacks are “a small- and medium-sized company killer,” especially if they don’t have cyber insurance.
Mark Greisiger, president of the NetDiligence consultancy, recently stated that “the cost of recovering from a single breach customer record hit $956.21 in 2014,” up three times from 2013 statistics.