50 years ago this April, three astronauts traveling through space on their way to the moon had a problem.
A big problem. It took a huge team on the ground in Houston Command, support personal from all over the country, and a nation praying for their safe return to solve the problem.
Simply put, their spacecraft was shut down intentionally to conserve power, oxygen and fuel to buy time to figure out how to solve the problem and get back home to planet Earth.
Sound familiar? Well of course it parallels the current COVID-19 pandemic response.
I was thinking more about small and medium-sized businesses that are under attack today by cyber hacks (criminals) looking for opportunities while their “targets” seem soft or vulnerable.
Small businesses are scrambling to stay viable while laying off staff or moving employees to “work from home.”
Applying for PPP loans, which by the way, requires the business owner to provide highly confidential information on an application that is submitted over the internet to a government agency. And yes, one that has been comprised during this process.
Security risks around information (data) have been around for a long time. Many large fortune 1000 companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars securing their data, but what about small and mid-sized businesses?
They have not. And now definitely do not have millions to spend, but are expected to maintain information/data security and keep their business operational.
“Houston, we have a problem” is something being heard by many business owners and stakeholders.
It may sound like, “we showed up to work Monday and the phones and computers were down.” Only to find out that they were locked down by ransomware.
Or their data was simply missing with a digital note on computer screens stating “your data has been removed, to get it back, you will need to pay a large fee in bitcoin within 24 hours.”
Imagine, your phones and computers completely locked down. What is your I.T. person going to do? Oh yea, small businesses don’t have an I.T. person. They have an outsourced MSP, they must be covered, right? The MSP can help rebuild your network, deploy new computers, phones, networks and use the data back up from yesterday….time frame? 2 weeks? Maybe more, depending on product availability.
After all, COVID-19 is impacting supply chains and resources which are not covered under your MSP agreement or your business insurance.
Consider this scenario and start by asking some questions.
Become Aware of your individual situation. What Behaviors might be driving your ship or creating weak spots in your system? What should your business Culture really include?
“Roger that Houston. So…Houston, what do you have for us…we are standing bye, over.”
– Ryan Heining, Founding Partner
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