The team at DefensX has a passion for helping entrepreneurs succeed, and we work every day with Managed Service Providers (MSPs) who share that passion. We bring the large enterprise set of expensive cyber defense arsenal at SMB’s use. Because we know that starting a small business is full of risks, and those individuals who invest their time, savings, and reputations to make a go of anything from opening a new retail shop or restaurant, building a new e-commerce business, establishing a medical or law practice, or other pursuits are brave and can be extremely successful with more independence and control over their destinies.

Today, there is virtually no successful business that does not leverage digital services to engage with their customers or clients, as it is impossible to compete without basic tools including email, voice and text messaging, and a company website, along with multiple social media accounts which are becoming increasingly popular as a “channel” between businesses and the people and organizations they serve.

As with the larger businesses Small to Medium Business (SMB) entrepreneurs are competing with, these smaller companies have been hit just as hard with the impact of the global pandemic, and in some ways even harder. Consider the hundreds of thousands of restaurants who were forced to reinvent themselves as delivery services to survive, when their employees could not gather, nor could their customers given the health risks. SMBs are under attack by the same technology, adversaries utilizing to attack to large enterprises.

The restaurants that survived succeeded by adaptation, transforming a server in the restaurant to an online server, taking orders over the phone, then relaying that information to the kitchen, and ensuring the orders were ultimately delivered on time (and answering questions if there were delays).

Some restaurants signed on to popular delivery services like GrubHub, UberEats and others, agreeing to take a hit on profit by paying a fee, and this meant developing systems that integrated with these platforms, and retraining staff to keep them employed but in different capacities.

What used to be as simple as walking into a restaurant, ordering, eating, and paying became an entirely new experience – for customers and staff alike.

It didn’t take long for “the dark side” to seize on the opportunity to take advantage of the early chaos, and sadly we saw many restaurants and other local businesses suffer from fraud. In their haste to keep their business operating and having to adapt within days – not weeks – business owners didn’t have time to stop and think about cybersecurity, and they paid dearly given a massive uptick in online orders at the onset of the pandemic which triggered an increase in fraud as cybercriminals s used the increased order volume to hide their fraudulent activity.

In short, what happened to many small businesses at the beginning of the pandemic was a fast-moving wave of cybercrime that they never had to worry about before, because the majority of their interactions happened in person and not virtually.

SMBs across all industries are more vulnerable today than ever when it comes to security breaches. They are turning to MSPs for help, which is, in turn, driving tremendous growth of many MSPs. As IT infrastructures become more complex to support the digital demand curve, security measures are evolving to address new cyber challenges.

The damage for SMBs who are not supported by a professional IT service can quickly add up, especially if a threat infiltrates a system and goes undetected—which is easily possible when network monitoring and automated threat detection mechanisms aren’t in place.

In addition to monetary damages as the result of cyberattacks on small businesses, these companies also must shoulder legal fees, compliance penalties, and loss of customers.

Not only are breaches detrimental to the perception of the brand among customers and prospects – they can be financially devastating. A study reveals that 57% of SMBs believe they won’t be targeted by online criminals, but almost 20% experienced an attack in the past year. These data breaches are costing more than ever before, with an average cost of a data breach for small businesses at $108,000.

At the same time, SMBs don’t have the massive cybersecurity budgets large enterprises have. It’s important to work with experts who understand “cybersecurity as a service” including outstanding and proven software that has been designed to work efficiently in a cloud-first world, that can be provisioned quickly and monitored and maintained reasonably, and that above all allows teams in SMBs to be productive while at the same time – safe.

DefensX is all about continually developing and supporting sensible cybersecurity solutions that stop cybercriminals before they can trick an employee into clicking on a nefarious link and can put a halt to the “social engineering” attacks that make a criminal engagement look normal to lure employees into clicking – and essentially unlocking – confidential systems which can include customer data.

Working with our valued MSP channel partners, we are committed to bringing state-of-the-art cloud-native cybersecurity tools to the market, which protect SMBs, support entrepreneurs, and allow businesses to concentrate on growing their revenues and profits without having to worry about potentially catastrophic events they may not have seen coming.