December | 2016 |

Month: December 2016

You’ve Been Hacked And Now You’re Being Sued!

Cybercrime is a continuing and rising threat. It has been in the news extensively and we have commented on the threats posed by Ransomware and DDoS attacks. We have also commented that 60% of cyber attacks are on SMEs

Here in Singapore we are far from immune to this as SMEs are increasingly becoming soft targets for cyber criminals who see SMEs as easy targets as they often lack the resources, expertise and technical manpower to defend themselves against cyber attacks.

As a result of this, digital data breaches are becoming an all too frequent occurrence today. What is less on the radar of the average SME business owner is the rising number of lawsuits brought brought by customers, government agencies, employees and a variety of other stakeholders.

Cybersecurity is more than just an IT challenge – cybersecurity is now a business and legal imperative.

What Risks Do I Face?

Broadly speaking there are 2 categories of litigation risks:

1. Criminal prosecution by Government regulatory authorities for the loss and misappropriation of consumer data.

Here in Singapore this is set out in the Personal Data Protection Act and the penalties for breaches of this legistlation are onerous with fines of up to $100,000 and custodial sentences of upto 3 years. The position is similar in most other countries in the region.

2. Civil prosecution by customers, employees and a variety of other stakeholders.

As a SME owner in the business-to-business sector, one of the biggest civil litigation concerns you potentially face is the [temporary or permanent] loss of business client data and your potential liability for your client’s consequential [direct and indirect] loss.

Take for example a professional services firm who experience a data loss as a result of a cyber-attack, and critical client data is lost – or innaccessible – at a time when it is most needed. In this scenario the owner[s] of this firm could face a civil prosecution for recovery of their client’s losses. In the instance of a consequential loss e.g. loss of business arising from the data loss, the liability could be considerable.

The law of contract law and the law of negligence will vary from one country to another, but the general principles remain broadly the same.

We should of course point out that we are not legal advisors! Our perspective in commenting on these issues is that of IT advisor and our purpose in highlighting these points is to draw your attention to the broader dimension of the risks faced by the SME business owner arising from cyber-attacks. To fully understand your legal position you should seek professional legal advice.

Assessing your risk

As with all these issues, the temptation for the SME business owner is to ignore the issue and to think “this won’t happen to me!”

But there are costs to doing nothing, and you will only discover the full extent of that cost when you experience a cyber-attack and your client’s business critical data is lost….

The prudent approach is to conduct a thorough risk assessment followed by an examination and implementation of the most effective solutions to protect your business.

If you would like to discuss this issue and how to protect your business from these threats and exposures, please get in touch and we will facilitate a thorough review to help you gain clarity, we will inform you on your best options, and if required we will implement a solution for you.

Since inception in 1996, PASR Technologies has been providing SME business owners with a level of service and support to the SME business owner that is typically only directly available in very large organisations.

Servicing businesses from 10 to up to 200 employees, our clients range from local SMEs through to regional offices of larger MNCs, and include airlines.

What is your business risk from broadband outage?

Cybercrime has been in the news extensively and we have commented on the threats posed by Ransomware and DDoS attacks. However recent events here in Singapore have highlighted another often ignored and very real threat to SME businesses – what happens when your broadband service provider experiences a major outage?

Singapore telco Singtel experienced an islandwide outage of its fibre broadband service for nearly 24 hours over the weekend.

This follows on closely from two recent broadband service outages that hit Singapore based service provider StarHub and that have been attributed to “intentional and likely malicious attacks” on its servers.

Over the past few months broadband outages have been reported from BT in the UK, Deutsche Telekom in Germany, and Australian telco Telstra which has experienced 7 major outages in recent months!

Why does this matter?

Well aside from the inconvenience to millions of consumers denied access to their favourite content on the internet it can have a devastating impact on businesses.

To put it bluntly you need your network to run your business. In these challenging and competitive times, few businesses can afford a single location to go off-line, and definitely not the HQ or the data centre!

If you experience a broadband outage, your network goes down, and your business is impacted – but by how much?

The reality is that most SME business owners don’t know the answer to that question… until the network goes down!

Above and beyond the immediate direct costs, there are indirect costs:

Loss of employee productivity
Reputational damage with customers, suppliers and banks
Loss of current revenue, loss of future revenue, and in some cases compensatory payments

Short broadband network outages can be an expensive nuisance, but the impact of larger outages can be devastatingly insurmountable for some businesses.

How can I protect my business?

You can reduce your exposure by having a secondary broadband provider. By having a second internet connection, the internet activity can be load balanced over the two lines with an automatic switch-over in the event of a network issue.
If you are the business owner of an Internet-dependent SME you may want to avoid a dangerous over-reliance on fixed networking solutions by having either a Wireless 3G/4G enabled router, or satellite-based solution for additional backup.

The first step is a thorough risk assessment

Clearly there are costs to either or both of these solutions. And the temptation is to ignore the issue.

But there are costs to doing nothing, and you will only discover the full extent of that cost when you experience a broadband network outage.

The prudent approach is to conduct a thorough risk assessment followed by a cost-benefit analysis.

If you would like to discuss this issue and what it means for your business, please get in touch and we will facilitate a thorough review to help you gain clarity, we will inform you on your best options, and if required we will implement a solution for you.