Are your technology initiatives keeping pace with cybersecurity?
If you’re a small or mid-sized business (SMB), digital technologies are crucial for your operations. They help you scale, build your team, market your products, and enhance customer service. Cloud solutions empower distributed teams, while advanced analytics drive business insights. Digital initiatives enable SMBs to compete more effectively and advance their business.
In fact, 2020 data from SMB Group shows that by investing in digital transformation, SMBs are 1.9 times more likely to forecast revenue increases. A Deloitte study also indicated that digital tools have helped business performance for SMBs — 85% of SMBs surveyed believe the digital tools they are using have helped their business in some way.
While there’s no question of its benefits, digital transformation is also changing, often increasing, cybersecurity requirements for businesses. The reality is, that as SMBs adopt cloud technologies, enable remote workforces, and more — security must also change and adapt. If security measures don’t match the digital pace, SMBs face cyber risks that can impact the success of digital initiatives.
In our new SMB Guide to Secure Digital Transformation, we look at how the cybersecurity landscape changes with digital technology adoption and why this makes your business vulnerable to cyber risk. We examine strategies, approaches, and best practices to better secure and continually protect businesses as they make the digital transition.
Understanding digital transformation and its security impact
The SMB Group defines digital transformation as “using digital technologies to create new or modify existing business processes, practices, models, cultures and customer experiences.” The phrase itself is also gaining more recognition among SMBs. Data revealed that nearly 60% of SMBs are now familiar with the term and understand its meaning. This has nearly doubled from two years ago.
However you define it, digital transformation can mean many things to a business. It can drive different goals and outcomes. SMBs may also be in different stages of adoption. Either fully transitioning to the cloud or putting specific digital strategies into place such as Office 365 or remote work policies.
All have impacts on cybersecurity. As workers rely on the web and more data and applications move to the cloud, it creates opportunities for unauthorized network access and cyberattacks. These threats can happen from multiple factors, misconfiguration of cloud services, lack of policies to manage user identity and access, phishing attacks fooling users.
Relying on traditional security can lead to attacks. SMBs often lack the resources or IT expertise to build layered security strategies. This leaves them vulnerable to malicious web traffic and risks from users accessing the cloud or working outside the office. For example, COVID-19 forced businesses to quickly set up remote work, cloud-based video meetings, and more. All of this added new risks and we saw new cyber threats emerge as attackers took advantage of insecure remote access and a growing, online workforce.
Adopting digital strategies while staying secure
The key to experiencing the full advantages of a digital economy is ensuring your cybersecurity strategies are in lockstep with your cloud strategies and initiatives.
To help you pursue this safely and securely, we created The SMB Guide to Digital Transformation. Download a complimentary issue today and start building a progressive and secure business.