The importance of incident response for SMBs in cybersecurity

With increasing digitization across the globe, it has become mandatory for businesses to invest in new technologies to ensure continuity. They must equip themselves with new-age digital tools to better study customers’ pain points and accordingly devise and deliver best-in-class solutions to keep them happy at every possible point.

Even though all of this is true, digitalization remains an important factor in business growth and provides threat actors with new vulnerabilities to capitalize on. In this context, the SMB segment has been affected the most in the last few years, mainly due to a lack of awareness. Approximately 60% of small businesses don’t consider such events a risk, while about 40% don’t prioritize security.

In 2022, India recorded 13.91 lakh cyber incidents, as highlighted by the Minister of State for Electronics and Information and Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar. Thus, businesses must have an incident response team by their side to understand their cyber risk posture, reduce the impact of cyber incidents, and ensure quick, effective response and threat mitigation.

How does incident response work?

After a cyber-incident, the victim organization must respond quickly to ensure minimal impact. Because the more time threat actors get, the more seamless it would be for them to infect the systems and have access to critical data.

Predicting cyber events is nearly impossible. Hence, companies must stay prepared with an organized incident response strategy to defend themselves better. With an action plan in place, an affected business can efficiently utilize manpower, tools, and resources to tackle the cyber incident and contain it in the least time possible, thereby reducing its overall cost.

By patching up exposed vulnerabilities, an organization can ensure that similar events don’t occur again. This goes a long way in ramping up cybersecurity resilience and protecting it from future threats. In addition, proactive measures like these demonstrate a company’s commitment to ensuring customer safety, thus instilling confidence in the stakeholders and strengthening consumer trust.

Additional security measures

Organizations must train and educate employees on potential security vulnerabilities, identify and avoid scams, and create strong passwords. They must also invest in security measures like firewalls, VPNs, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and anti-virus programs to ensure that all devices remain protected.

Company’s in-house apps and software should be frequently updated to fix existing bugs that could act as a medium for threat actors to barge in and take control. Small businesses should also consider buying cyber insurance coverage to avoid extreme costs arising from cyber incidents, which could cause reputational damage to the firm.

Wrapping up

As businesses go digital, the possibilities of cyber incidents will only increase. On top of this, it is pertinent to note that no organization is 100% safe and protected. However, with a robust incident response plan, leaders can respond quickly to threat actors and thus thwart their impact on overall business operations. 

Collaborating with leading incident response firms like Arete is highly recommended in such scenarios. This synergy will equip businesses with the right tools and resources to combat cyber threats and restore normal business operations within a few days. 

As digitization takes the world by storm, businesses must prioritize and invest mindfully in strengthening their security infrastructures. It may be the only path to sustained growth in today’s digital-first landscape.

 Authored By- Raj Sivaraju, President, APAC, Arete