Page 9 - BusinessWest June 23, 2021

Lauren Ostberg says small businesses, many without IT teams or sophisticated cybersecurity systems, are low-hanging fruit for hackers.
them), and the direction this matter is taking. One involves a large nonprofit in the health-
care sector, he said, adding that this client found out the hard way all that can be involved with returning things to the way they were before the attack.
“It got hit really hard, and they called us to help fix the situation,” Bates recalled. “They were hacked, they put their system down,
they were out of e-mail, they were out of just about everything you can think
of. The sad part was they weren’t prepared to know what to do, and to top it off, their insurance company forced them to use their security group, which had a limited knowledge of their network, and pay for those services, while also pay-
ing us to come in and help those guys understand what they had and fix it.
“They’re up and run- ning,” he went on. “But it took about two weeks.”
Another case involves
a small machine shop in the Hartford area, he said, adding that this small busi-
ness has been informed that, if it wants to keep getting contracts from the federal government, it must meet a series of guidelines regarding cyberattacks and being fully prepared for them. “It’s going to run about $4,000 to $5,000 a month for us to monitor and secure his system and hit the score the federal government is telling him to hit.”
Something’s Phishy
These anecdotes are just some of many that help tell the story of how cybersecurity is becom- ing a huge issue for business owners and man- agers, one they can no longer ignore — not that they could really ignore it before.
Indeed, such sobering messages have been
“Typically, we find that most organizations have basic security measures in place, but rarely understand their level of potential exposure or impact on operations during such an event.”
delivered with increasing frequency over the past several weeks as the high-profile attacks — and the ransom payments that include six and some- times seven zeroes — come with increasing regu- larity. And they have certainly stimulated some interest within the business community, and also government offices and nonprofits, to be ready, or at least more ready.
“The conversations have changed,” Christian- son said. “In the past, there were certain people you could talk to until you were blue in the face, and it was purely a dollars-and-cents discussion: ‘you want me to spend how much in a firewall, or this piece of software?’ Now, it’s ‘what can we do?’”
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FEATURE
JUNE 23, 2021 9
BusinessWest