As of October 2024, over 80% of small businesses have experienced a breach according to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC).

Posted On 11.01.24, by i2m_adm

This month’s customer satisfaction score:98.86%

“Robin provides immediate and outstanding customer service while demonstrating expert technical knowledge.”

The Cyber Knowledge Gap

Trends in the threat landscape

According to Infosecurity Magazine, “nearly 70% of business leaders believe their employees lack critical cybersecurity knowledge, a sharp increase from 56% in 2023.” This information comes from a survey by Fortinet of 1850 executives across 29 countries and multiple industries – including manufacturing, financial services and technology.

As your MSP, we want to illuminate and address this gap so all of our clients feel prepared to handle what exists and what is coming. Of the trends in the field, Phishing is still a significant concern, especially as AI is easier to use and cyber-criminals leverage it to craft more targeted and individualized attacks. We wrote last month about Security Awareness Training and this is what our Director of Operations calls the “low hanging fruit”. Employee training plays a crucial role in protecting yourself at work and at home – so remember to take your trainings every month!

Other key focus areas include data security and privacy. There are lots of ways to secure your data – and securing your passwords is a great first step. We have written before about Bitwarden and this is another reminder that it’s free! If you don’t have complex passwords saved in a vault, you are doing yourself a disservice.

Remember – we are here to help. If something looks suspicious, get in touch! We would much rather answer a question you might think is dumb than to come in when it’s too late. There are no dumb questions!

From our Engineers

As of October 2025, Windows 10 will be end of life. This means it will no longer get security updates.

Many will be able to update to Windows 11 easily, but because of the requirements, some machines will need to be replaced.

We are working to go through all of our clients’ machines to determine which machines will be able to handle the updates, but we wanted to make you aware that this is coming.

As of October 2024, over 80% of small businesses have experienced a breach according to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC).

This month’s customer satisfaction score:98.86%

The Cyber Knowledge Gap

Trends in the threat landscape

From our Engineers

Other Posts

According to the FBI, 80% of cybersecurity breaches are caused by human error.

62% of Americans claim to use thes ame password across 3-7 different accounts (via SecureAuth).

Small to medium-sized businesse sare victims of the majority (64%) of today’s cyberattacks, and it’s because they are inadequately protected.

The onboarding process is an employee’s first impression of a company. First impressions matter and we want to help you make a good one!

A report by PwC found that 85% of customers said they will not do business with an organization if they are worried about its data practices.

According to Verizon’s 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report, 96% of cyberattacks arrive by email.

According to ConnectWise, the most common causes of outages are: 53% cybersecurity event, 52% infrastructure or networking, 49% accidental deletion, 53% applications.

On average, a single cyberattack can cost a small business more than $200,000. – Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report

i2m has no marketing department. All of our clients come from word-of-mouth recommendations. We appreciate that you all take time to tell your friends about us!

Compared to hacking a secure network, it is much easier to download information from an unencrypted or unprotected laptop. This is a reality a lot of business owners and IT professionals fail to realise. – via Security Boulevard

The 2023 MGM hack, showed that even for well-prepared or technically advanced companies, ‘it is not a matter of if you get attacked, but when you get attacked’ – Gregory Moody, director of the cybersecurity program at UNLV

According to the FBI, the U.S. lost a record $12.5 billion to cyber crime in 2023 – a 22% increase from 2022 of the total losses, Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams resulted in over $2.9 billion in losses.

In a recent report, Google and Mandiant said they monitored 97 zero- day vulnerabilities exploited in the wild in 2023, a 50% increase compared to the previous year.

According to Connectwise, one of the best ways to prevent a cyber attack is to secure your email. Most attacks originate in email and choosing services designed to reduce spam is the best way to mitigate risk.

According to Connectwise, the average cost of a data incident is $4.35 million.

“CSAT isn’t about congratulating yourself; it’s about finding areas where you can improve. By spotting common complaints or issues, you can start making improvements.” -Stephen Spiegel, CrewHu

Hackers have the ability to connect stolen phone records to specific people and companies. They then use this information to initiate sophisticated social engineering attacks that prey on your emotions, such as fear.

Last year alone, the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received reports from almost 12,000 victims reporting cyber security scams, resulting over $73 million in losses during last year’s holiday season.

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