More than half (54%) of all cyber-attacks result in financial damages, not to mention lost revenue, customers, reputation damage and business downtime.

This is according to the Cisco 2018 Security Capabilities Benchmark study, and according to Westcon-Comstor, the financial damages alone are enough to cripple a small business.

“Small business is hugely attractive to cybercriminals because often they don’t have the security in place to adequately protect themselves from these bad actors. One large scale attack that compromises company data could lead to a small business closing its doors and to that end, already has seen companies close,” states Louise Taute, Comstor Director Southern Africa at Westcon-Comstor.

“Working with Cisco we have identified the cause and effect the acts of cybercriminals can have on a small business, and are offering resellers a full portfolio of security solutions to help them better arm their end user customers in the event of an attack,” she adds.

But it is not as easy as deploying technology to stop the threats, there are a host of additional challenges such as skills, employee education and technology costs that impact the safety of the small business. Some of the business areas that a small business can immediately protect include upgrading their endpoint security, applying better web application security and the deployment of intrusion prevention.

There really is no silver bullet for the small business. But there are some qualified technologies that can help them plug the holes in a security dam that is about to burst. With Cisco small business security solutions via Cisco Umbrella, users can deploy a first-line defence in minutes and protect what’s important, if that is in the office or on a mobile workers device or endpoint. The solutions are also 100% configurable, easy to deploy and provide visibility through alerts to your administrator and dashboards.

Umbrella assists the small business with threat enforcement, threat intelligence and helps to secure Internet gateways.

“When using Cisco Umbrella, you can protect your customers from malware, lock down sensitive information, and effectively guard against malicious activities. Because it is delivered via the cloud, you can roll it out without complicated installations, configurations, and updates.

“Security needs to be invisible, but it also needs to be effective. The days of spending large amounts on disparate security solutions from a host of vendors are over. The management burdens on IT teams is just too pressing, which is why all-inclusive solutions such as that of Cisco Umbrella helps a small business better manage security, the associated costs and effectiveness overall,” ends Taute.