How to Keep the Hackers from Eating your Company for Lunch

Don't feed the 'shark' your data for lunch!

You are a small or medium-sized business, facing all the challenges in today’s economy. Your data is your business’ lifeline and there is a world of hackers eager to make you their lunch.

According to an article from the Wall Street Journal, in 2010, the U.S. Secret Service and Verizon Communications Inc.‘s forensic analysis unit responded to 761 data breaches and of those, 63% were from companies with 100 employees or fewer. This is way up from 141 data breaches in 2009 with 27% of those attacks being on small businesses.

Small businesses have become prime targets because they lack the security of big businesses. Weak passwords, malicious programs sent as attachments or links in emails to employees are some of the ways hackers can get into small business systems and steal data.

What can you do—and how can you afford—to keep your data secure?

Ever more fearful of cyber attacks, small and medium-size companies, the biggest chunk of U.S. enterprise, are starting to outsource their security to protect valuable files from hacking. An increasing number of smaller firms are opting to rely on cloud providers for protection to keep their data out of the hands of predators known as hackers.

Outsourcing data storage and business processes to Cloud providers is finally catching on in the small and medium-sized business world, which accounts for the vast majority of companies in the U.S.

Smaller firms are following in the footsteps of their bigger cousins and moving their operations to the cloud attracted by cost savings and increased collaboration and mobility but increasingly by security as well.

Driving the migration to the cloud: rapid growth in cloud services and options, ever-larger economies of scale making the Cloud affordable to the small business market and growing concerns over data security and business continuity.

In an article from the WSJ: “Eric Cooper has 150 employees and 5,000 volunteers working for him at the San Antonio Food Bank. He wanted to secure the nonprofit’s donor list and complex supplier network, among other issues. To get those safeguards, he needed an operating system “well above our technological and intellectual capacity,” he says. So he outsourced the food bank’s IT needs to a cloud provider. “It was a no-brainer. I can’t be worried about whether there’s someone hacking our system.”

Large Cloud providers, including Amazon, Rackspace and InfoStreet provide the type of basic and enhanced security tasks that often don’t get done, or done well, at most small companies. InfoStreet has been providing cloud based services since 1994 and like all of the large cloud providers has invested more in security measures than almost any company, large or small, could possibly afford.

“Small and medium businesses are insane not to leverage the advantages of cloud computing and move to the cloud,” says Jim Reavis of Cloud Security Alliance, an industry group. “It ends up being almost in all cases a security upgrade because they can’t otherwise afford the practices.”

But the cloud is not infallible and can cut both ways on security. If the cloud provider’s security is weak it could actually make your data more vulnerable.

In fact, when the tech-research group IDC asked businesses in 2008 what factors were most likely to discourage their use of cloud computing, 72% of small businesses (defined as having fewer than 100 employees) and 63% of mid-sized companies (100 to 999 employees) said security was their chief worry.

But here’s the trend: By mid-2011, those numbers had dropped to 50% and 47%, respectively. Companies are rethinking cloud security, says Ray Boggs, of IDC. At the beginning of 2010, about 7% of small companies and 17% of mid-sized companies said they had some cloud activity. Just 18 months later, the numbers had doubled to 13% and 36%, respectively. “And the trend continues,” Mr. Boggs says.

It is still common for small and mid-sized businesses—lawyers, financial advisers, retailers—to want to retain tech in-house.

But the trajectory of small to medium businesses moving to the cloud demonstrates that over time these sorts of companies will gravitate to cloud computing, particularly when they start giving employees remote access from home that opens new doors to their files.

And the tipping point for making that transition? Pain—when a shark gets through and disrupts the business.