By David Lenz, vice president, Asia Pacific at Arcserve
Cyber threats continue to evolve and pose significant risks to businesses of all sizes across all industries. The consequences of a cyberattack can be devastating, ranging from financial loss to reputational damage to legal liabilities.
But SMEs can defend themselves if they embrace the five pillars of cyber resilience: identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover. These serve as a comprehensive framework for navigating today’s challenges.
Many SMEs continue to make three common mistakes that leave them vulnerable to cyber threats.
Mistake 1: Underestimating the value of digital assets and data
One of the most critical errors in a company’s cyber resilience efforts is failing to recognise the significance and the worth of their digital assets, including intellectual property, customer data, and proprietary information. This lack of awareness can lead to inadequate protection measures, such as weak passwords, outdated software, and insufficient access controls, which exposes the company to cyber threats.
With the world’s increasing reliance on digital technologies and data-driven decision-making, digital assets have become more valuable than ever—and more sought-after by cybercriminals. SMEs must conduct thorough risk assessments to identify their most critical assets and data, understand their vulnerabilities, and implement robust security measures to strengthen them.
These measures should include regular monitoring, patching, and updating systems and software and implementing strong authentication mechanisms and encryption protocols.
While this type of program may be routine for a large organisation, many SMEs still have legacy applications running on outdated operating systems from Windows, which can pose a significant problem, creating a data resilience gap in their strategy. It can present a real risk if their backup vendor cannot support those outdated operating systems.
Therefore, it is essential to assess how many legacy applications are running on older operating systems and whether they can be backed up.
Mistake 2: Ineffective management of third-party risk
Many SMEs rely on third-party vendors, suppliers, and service providers to support their operations, and these external partners often have access to critical systems, data, and networks. However, not all third parties have a strong cybersecurity posture; if they don’t, their vulnerabilities can provide entry points for cyberattacks.
SMEs often fail to thoroughly assess their third-party partners’ cybersecurity posture and ensure that they adhere to the same security standards and protocols as their own. It can create weak links in the cybersecurity chain, allowing cybercriminals to exploit vulnerabilities in third-party systems and gain unauthorised access to a company’s data or systems.
Therefore, companies must conduct comprehensive due diligence on third-party vendors, assess their cybersecurity capabilities, and establish robust contracts and agreements that clearly define security expectations and responsibilities. They should also regularly monitor and audit third-party cybersecurity practices to ensure ongoing compliance.
This third-party risk is especially acute for organisations operating in a hybrid cloud environment. That’s because supporting disparate cloud platforms and ensuring they work well with each other can be unwieldy and open up security gaps.
To address these concerns, SMEs should have an adequate data protection and recovery strategy for their hybrid cloud environment. It includes choosing a cloud storage solution that offers continuous snapshots, multiple recovery points, and security controls for private, public, and SaaS environments.
Mistake 3: Inadequate testing of incident-response plans
Companies often invest significant resources in developing incident-response plans to mitigate the impact of cyberattacks. However, many fail to adequately test and update their plans, which leaves them ill-prepared to respond effectively to real-world cyber incidents. Incident-response strategies are only effective if regularly tested, refined, and updated based on evolving cyber threats and changing business needs.
SMEs should conduct regular tabletop exercises and simulated cyberattack scenarios to test the effectiveness of their incident-response plans. These exercises can help identify gaps and weaknesses in the plans and indicate necessary adjustments.
In addition, SMEs should conduct post-incident reviews after any actual cyber incident to assess the effectiveness of the response and identify areas for improvement. This feedback loop is critical for continuously improving the incident-response capabilities of an SME and ensuring that plans remain effective and relevant.
As the threat landscape evolves, SMEs must avoid common mistakes in their cyber resilience efforts. Understanding the value of assets and data, effectively managing third-party risks, and adequately testing incident-response plans are all critical components of a robust cybersecurity strategy.
