To further understand why your value as a target is important, you need to understand the mindset of your potential attacker. Are you a small business and your attacker is a script kiddie? Well, some industry best practices will likely take care of most of your concern. Are you a small business and your spouse is a director at a large financial institution? Your potential attacker could now be a nation state (ie: China) or other well funded organization. Are you a regional power plant? Your potential attacker is likely well funded and determined as well. In these later two cases, you may find yourself in a position where it’s reasonably unlikely that you will be able to prevent your attacker from being successful in the long term. There are certainly things you can do, but understand who your likely opponent is, and how they would value you. If you are a valuable target, your attacker is likely to spend more resources in an attempt to be successful. That doesn’t mean that they will be successful, or that they won’t move on if your defenses prove to be difficult to circumvent. With enough of a motive and resources, the assumption should be that you can be hacked, it is up to each business to make that risk (time & money) outweigh the reward (being hacked). And if you find yourself in the high value category, being able to limit the potential damage done by an attacker, prior to their discovery.
If you found this article interesting, check out some other posts:
- A SMB’s Practical Approach to Cybersecurity
- 5 Unique Cybersecurity Threats You Need to Know to Protect Your SMB
Or head over to the Contact Us page if you have a particular question that you would like answered