One of the biggest myths out there related to cybersecurity is that criminals only go after the big enterprises. Why should they care about your small operation, anyway? In reality, cybercriminals love to attack small businesses to take advantage of their weaker security infrastructures. If you’re not careful, this could lead to serious losses for your business stemming from a loss of trust, legal fees, and operational downtime.
One of the inevitabilities of starting and operating a successful business is that your IT infrastructure will eventually outgrow itself. While you might have been able to start operations with just a couple of people, the same network that used to work just fine is likely bowing under the stress of additional employees and workstations. If you want to build a sustainable and reliable infrastructure, it’s best that you rely on experts who can help your company stay as competitive as possible, regardless of how much you grow.
Not all artificially intelligent tools are built the same. One disparity that can make all the difference is whether a particular tool you and your team use is public or private.
Let’s dive into the distinction and why it matters so much.
In IT services, we often use the iceberg analogy to describe the Internet. The Surface Web, the sites you browse daily, is just the 10 percent visible above the waterline. Below that lies the Deep Web, and at the murky bottom is the Dark Web.
For a business owner, the Dark Web isn’t just a concept from a spy movie; it is a sophisticated, unregulated marketplace where your company’s data is the primary commodity (and target). If your information is down there, it’s not a matter of if someone will use it, but when.
Let’s assume that, as a responsible business owner, you’ve established standard operating procedures for your employees to follow—including the tools they can officially use in the course of their tasks. That said, there is always the chance that someone encountered an issue and independently investigated and “fixed” it.
If anyone is using an unapproved tool or an external account to access and manipulate your business data, you have a problem… a problem known as shadow IT.
