6 Reasons to Include Cybersecurity in Your Startup Business Strategy
Let’s talk cybersecurity for startups.
You’ve worked hard to create your company. You’ve invested time and money. You’ve hired great people. You’ve taken risks. Not prioritizing security would be your biggest risk – you are putting everything you’ve worked for on the line. As hacking threats rise, all your hard work could disappear at the click of a hacker’s mouse.
Sure, you have other priorities. Marketing. Sales. Hiring talent. Scaling up your technological capabilities to manage all the business. Finding funding. You don’t want to slow down. But if your data isn’t protected, you could be forced to slow down. Or stop.
Here are six reasons for startups to prioritize your cybersecurity strategy early.
1. Prevent Data Breaches
Research by Accenture shows that the number of data breaches is growing fast. Between 2018 and 2019, security breaches increased by 11%. Cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated, too, and using a variety of methods to attack companies. These include malware and ransomware, social engineering, and attacks through the supply chain.
Implementing appropriate cybersecurity strategies will help to prevent data breaches, and the more challenging you make it to attack your systems, the more likely it is that cybercriminals will move on.
2. It’s a Question of Customer Trust
Customers expect you to keep their data safe. If you don’t employ effective cybersecurity, how can you expect customers to trust you? Trust is crucial to your ability to grow your business fast – a key reason cybersecurity for startups should be top of your priorities list.
3. Reduce/Eliminate Reputational Risk
A breach will quickly become public knowledge and damage your reputation. This will make it more challenging to raise funds and sign new customers. Often, this reputational damage can be the death of a startup.
4. Can You Afford the Downtime?
If you should suffer a security breach, you’ll need to contain it quickly and then take measures to correct the situation. Your business will be disrupted. You may have to close operations, maybe for weeks. Can you afford the effect on revenues and profits?
5. Can You Afford the Financial Impact?
We’ve touched on the financial impact of a data breach above, but lost revenue and profits is only the beginning. You’ll need to pay for the response to the data breach. You may have legal fees to pay, too. You’ll have to fund cybersecurity measures, which will now be exceptional costs. There may also be compensations to pay, as well as penalties levied by your regulator.
6. You’re the Low-Hanging Fruit
As mature companies ramp up their cybersecurity strategies, cybercriminals are seeking out easier targets. Startups are often under-protected, or even unprotected. Cybercriminals understand that for startups, cybersecurity is typically low on the list of priorities. This makes startups the low-hanging fruit on which cybercriminals thrive ─ greater returns for less criminal effort on their part.
Don’t Jeopardize Rapid Growth by Neglecting Cybersecurity
Startups tend to neglect cybersecurity, but you do so at your own peril. As you scale your business for rapid growth, you’ll expand by using mobile apps, widening and deepening your website, offering online commerce opportunities, and integrating new software into your operations.
The more rapidly you grow, the more data you collect and store. Your business is attractive to cybercriminals. Without adequate cybersecurity strategies, processes, and protocols, you are making their lives easy. You are a target, and a potentially lucrative one. And what is lucrative for a cybercriminal is costly for a startup.
How robust is your cybersecurity? To learn how you can find out how easy it is for a cybercriminal to attack your systems and infrastructure, and how to develop an effective cybersecurity strategy, contact Tiro Security today.