Establishing a human firewall in your business is more important than you think. Consider your employees. On one hand, they are your single most important business asset. The diligence and know-how of your staff can make or break not only your bottom line, but also your company’s ability to serve its customers securely. On the other hand, employees are also a crucial weakness when it comes to technical and digital security. Even a staff that’s excellent at customer service and account management can stumble on IT matters in ways that cause enormous losses.
Just how big is this human factor in your businesses’ security? According to IBM’s annual Threat Intelligence Index research for 2021, a whopping 95% of all cybersecurity breaches are successful because the human element of a company made a mistake. In other words, good software, good hardware and strong passwords are great, but they mean little without a staff that’s vigorously trained and knowledgeable. It makes creating a Human Firewall a necessary business process.
The Cost Problem of a Human Firewall
The problem for most small to medium businesses is that creating a human firewall is no easy feat. Though the ideal situation, hiring an in-house staff of truly capable, 24-hour IT security staff can be extremely expensive. It’s not just a question of finding especially diligent IT security employees; you’ll also need them on-call 24 hours a day. To truly be strong, IT security needs to monitor your other employees work-related activities almost all of the time and across the board.
This is generally not cheap to do, and not just because of the talent retention. Economies of scale also apply to any in-house effort. These usually require you to buy dedicated software and hardware solutions for data protection and monitoring at a cost that rapidly ramps up even for a small company. Then of course you will also need to back up your customer and business-related data, securely and with a remote backup aspect that protects against on-site disasters like break-ins and thefts.
All of these security outlays, when handled in-house, will start to add up. Because of the economy of scale problem mentioned above, you’ll then be tempted to think they’re not entirely justified. And that’s dangerous!
Why You Still Need a Human Firewall
But that’s the thing: The need for this kind of thorough IT security genuinely is so important. Ransomware spreaders, phishing attackers and many other types of digital thieves are ramping up their attacks enormously year over year. Even your company’s top management won’t be immune to possible mistakes. One recent study found that even the average CEO will be sent at least 57 phishing email attacks per year.
How likely is it that he or she, or someone else in your company, falls victim to at least one of them? It’s very likely based on the stats for business data breach frequency. Even well-trained staff can be tricked by excellent attack camouflage. It’s so easy for one of them to click on a malicious email link, and download a malware attachment that’s disguised as something from a trusted internal source.
So what’s the solution to cost-efficiently building robust IT security while also having a human firewall of qualified staff keep it secure? Well, this is where a managed IT service can step into the picture. They can deliver an external human firewall with its own tools to solve your economy of scale problem and digital security needs.
How to Have Effective, Cost-efficient Protection
A professional and well-equipped managed IT security provider such as Great Lakes Computer Corporation will provide an external critical eye to the structure of your IT and data security. It will have its own monitoring, analytics and forensic tools ready to use for a careful auditing of how your company’s security can be improved.
Following this, we use a wide range of tools to monitor your staff’s email and other communications activities to ensure that they’re not accidentally opening a door for cybercriminals. Plus, our dedicated data backup solutions includes 24-hour protection for your most sensitive information against both ransomware and breach attempts.
The crucial thing to keep in mind with an external IT security provider is that it lets you have the benefit of a corporate-level human firewall. It will provide all the accompanying hardware tools but without the need to spend a fortune on buying and installing this level of protection yourself.
