May 19, 2022 | By stephen

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Cheap is Expensive: Cutting Corners in Cyber Security Will Backfire

• Cybersecurity

Businesses are continually looking for ways to increase profits and minimize expenditures. Therefore, it’s a no-brainer that we see a lot of cutting corners in cybersecurity. From not spending enough on data security to ‘one-man hiring band’ IT service providers and overlooking standard cybersecurity practices like staff training, it’s not enough to say that businesses now sacrifice data security for profits. And reasonably so—without profits, they can’t survive.

What good is profitability without a functioning business? Or with a company that’s down for days because of a ransomware attack? Profitability will not matter in these circumstances. That’s the danger of prioritizing profits over cybersecurity risk mitigation.

VIDEO: Cutting Corners In Cybersecurity | LeadingIT 074

Why Not Spending Enough Exposes Companies to Cyberattacks

IT can be inarguably one of the costliest departments in any organization, especially if you handle everything internally. You’ll have to maintain salaried specialists earning an average base salary of $49,378 per year, pay their allowances and bonuses, acquire and continually update various software and hardware, and the list is endless. That explains why several small and medium-sized businesses opt for ‘one-man band’ IT service providers.

4 Reasons You Shouldn’t Leave Your IT to a ‘One-man Band’

The IT guy is not a full-time employee, so they’re not entitled to allowances or bonuses. Instead, you only call them on necessity, such as during a glitch or deployment of a new environment. This approach may seem like the perfect solution until you consider its downsides:

1. They May Not Have Enough Budget or Layers

One of the main reasons businesses outsource IT support is the cost factor—outsourcing shifts all the acquisition and maintenance expenditures to the service provider. For example, at LeadingIT, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to acquire the necessary tools, deploy several layers, list vendor services and maintain the best experts in the industry to ensure that we’re doing things correctly.

We can afford this because we have several customers, enabling us to benefit from the economy of scale. However, that’s often not the case for one-man-band IT service providers—they typically serve a handful of clients and generate a few thousand dollars monthly. Therefore, most one-man-band IT providers can barely afford the state-of-the-art equipment necessary for delivering high-quality IT support.

2. Cybersecurity Is a Vast and Dynamic Field

IT support is a vast field—from database design to network monitoring, endpoint protection, incident response, digital forensics, and penetration testing—nobody can master it all. That’s why established IT companies like us hire experts with specialties in specific branches of IT support. Our application security specialists focus on that and nothing else, giving them enough time to understand their area of focus and deliver the best service. And that’s what differentiates us from IT Guys.

A one-man-band IT service provider handles everything by themselves, meaning that the same person must learn and understand every IT concept, which is impossible. Even if they were to have basic knowledge in all the IT disciplines, they still wouldn’t be able to keep up with rapid developments in the field. As a result, they’re likely to use outdated techniques and expose your systems to breaches and hacks.

3. Ensuring IT Teams Have Enough Time

You never know when the bad guys will strike. Therefore, it’s crucial to monitor your systems round-the-clock, continually update your intrusion detection and prevention protocols and occasionally audit your network for threats. These tasks are time-sensitive; they require experts dedicated to your systems fully. A ‘one-man band’ IT service provider may not have enough time to give all their clients this kind of support.

4. Solo Providers Are Often Reactive

Prevention is always better than cure, and it’s not any different for cybersecurity. IBM estimates that the average cost of a data breach is $3.86 million, way higher than what it’d cost your organization to deploy preventive measures. Unfortunately, most one-man-band service providers typically wait to react after glitches. This reactive approach is often because IT guys lack enough time, expertise, and resources to design and deploy proactive data security measures. They may have so far been lucky to catch unauthorized access attempts in time to prevent severe breaches, but that won’t always be the case.

Decisions Regarding Cybersecurity Must Weigh the Benefits Against Risk

Cybersecurity is not a luxury; it’s do-or-die for your Chicagoland organization in the information age. Paying a few extra dollars to outsource a reputable IT service provider or implement their recommendations may seem expensive, but it actually isn’t if you consider its benefits. With Accenture estimating that security breaches have been up by 67% over the last decade and the SEC saying that over 60% of SMBs shut down within six months after surviving data breaches, we think it’s cheaper to invest in cybersecurity than prioritizing profits and risking losing your entire business. Profits won’t matter if ransomware hits your organization.

LeadingIT offers 24/7, all-inclusive, fast and friendly technology and cybersecurity support for nonprofits, manufacturers, schools, accounting firms, religious organizations, government, and law offices with 20-200 employees across the Chicagoland area.