How to avoid up to £27,173.60 in data breach costs

How to avoid up to £27,173.60 in data breach costs

Although £27,173.60 has been reported as the average cost for a small business that has experienced a cyber attack, there is an answer: Cloud antivirus software.

Cloud antivirus software protects your business from critical vulnerabilities that can have the strength and power to jeopardise your operations catastrophically.

Why you should remove the “greatest threat”

Emerging viruses, spyware, and malware are cropping up at an alarming rate, threatening the operability and productivity of businesses. That’s where antivirus software comes in. It protects systems from the modern day online attack that is cybercrime. In fact, Ginni Rometty, IBM’s chairman, president and CEO, described cybercrime as “the greatest threat to every company in the world.“

Research and advisory firm, Gartner, revealed: “Security and risk management leaders should ensure that their endpoint protection vendor is evolving to defend against the rapidly changing threat landscape and the need for more efficient incident and alert response capabilities.”

What is antivirus cloud software?

The software is a programme solution that places antivirus workloads onto a cloud-based server, instead of using up space on the user’s computer.

Rather than using the power of a local computer, the cloud computing antivirus software programmes use a lesser solution that sits on the desktop and relieves space on the computer.

Using the internet, cloud-based antivirus programme pair your IT provider with your data to perform antivirus scans and analysis. Following an examination and report, measures will then come into action on the user’s computer to counter the impact of any potential threats.

Today, distributed computer technology is available and popular. Established and startup firms seek protection from damaging cyber attacks, and common methods of intrusion, including phishing emails, trojans and ransomware.

Facing potential downtime

Along with saving hours of unnecessary admin and lost data, cloud backup solutions support businesses and protect systems from virus attacks.

If productivity is the lifeblood of an organisation, then downtime has the potential to stop its activity in its tracks. Digital transformation is the name of the strategic game for many of today’s companies, with businesses focusing on increasing performance, reducing downtime and removing cyber threats.

In September 2017, a new market research report “Digital Transformation Market by Component” set out its global forecast to 2022. It predicted market growth from £155.9 billion in 2017 to 373. 3 billion by 2022, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR)of 19.1% from 2017 to 2022.

The Digital Transformation Market itself is split into on-premise and cloud-based services. The cloud segment is anticipated to hit the highest growth rate during this forecast period. In a world where cybercrime exits, businesses are considering cloud antivirus software as a reassuring and fundamental preventative measure.

In addition, over 80% of organisations are now moving towards a hybrid environment that connects private data centres and public clouds, ZK Research data revealed. Unsurprisingly, this impacts the data centre interconnect market, which was previously valued at £2.4 billion in 2016. By 2023, this is expected to jump to £4.85 billion, at a CAGR of 10.04%.

Antivirus cloud benefits

1. Periodic scanning

Cloud technology processes and interprets scan data on a user’s computer regularly and then uploads these results. This lowers the amount of processing power required to keep the system protected.

2. Real-time data

Information can be communicated to the desktop client in real-time. This speeds up the safe, reliable and secure process of bringing up to date local malicious files and sites (blacklists), and approved files and sites (whitelists).

This replaces the traditional manual approach, where a user must conduct an update, or depend on a weekly or monthly automatic analysis.

3. Budget-aware

For small businesses, cloud antivirus software is typically more cost-effective than buying the complete antivirus software suite. It is beneficial as it does not compromise the level of protection against security threats.  

Common antivirus features, including virus scanning, scheduling, file removal and reporting are all provided as part of a cloud-based antivirus service.

For larger organisations, a comprehensive suite can provide additional features. These can prevent spam and phishing, along with offering internet banking security and mobile device safeguarding against cyber threats.

4. Security trends

As an advantage over traditional antivirus technologies, cloud antivirus software is able to collect information from millions of individual computers. This capability helps to identify and understand prominent and worrying cyber-related trends.

5. Agility

With traditional antivirus programmes, security researchers must detect threats before they impact the device. As so many companies are heading in the direction of digital transformation today, cloud antivirus software protects efficiently, securely and reliably.

This extensive intelligence enables your trusted IT provider to determine and locate threats quicker. A block can then stop these from having a detrimental impact on your business.

Businesses should avoid experiencing the true impact of a malware intrusion from clicking on a suspicious link or downloading a cyber-corrupt file. Rather than rebooting your device to install updates on the machine, cloud-based antivirus installs can occur automatically once available.

6. Behavioural analysis

Malware detection techniques accompany cloud antivirus software, and effectively analysis behavioural and problem-solving methods to identify suspicious activities. Once identified, your IT provider can block this from intercepting programmes and file a report to the cloud.

Cloud antivirus considerations

1. Connectivity

Cloud-based antivirus software requires an internet connection. Therefore, it is vital to have your trusted IT provider on hand to enforce a plan of action if web services go down, and help you get back online efficiently.  If this happens with cloud antivirus systems, the local client is only able to scan, not interpret the data. As a result, this can leave your computer without protection.

With this said, antivirus and hosting security measures can include offline protection too. This offline element is crucial if the internet service provider or local network is experiencing issues.

2. Optimisation

Companies must select the most accurate definition of blacklisted and whitelisted files and sites. These definitions should appear within the local client to avoid clogging up the server.

A date for your diary

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come into force in the UK on 25th May 2018. It will implement a new accountability requirement that imposes a regulatory stipulation and presents financial risks if not adhered to.

In an interview with Computerweekly.com, Jeremy Drew, partner at RPC, predicted that the frequency of reporting data breaches is expected to rise, particularly in the retail sector, as reporting will become obligatory.

The future of cybercrime

A cybersecurity report, released on 17th October 2017, shows why companies are focusing on updating their cybersecurity protection:

Small businesses need to protect themselves now

Despite these statistics, 83% of small businesses conduct their daily operations with no formal cybersecurity plan.

An analysis of Gov.uk data conducted by commercial property agency Savoy Stewart in July 2017, revealed that despite these alarming figures, only 39% of directors or security managers consider cybersecurity as a high priority. 

For more information or help with cloud-based antivirus solutions, contact Indigo IT, your trusted IT provider.

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