It’s safe to say that businesses now realise that digitalisation and implementating eCommerce is crucial to growth and staying relevant in a quickly changing market. Whilst introducing new technology is undoubtedly an exciting development for any business and a marker of sustained growth and development, it’s worth also highlighting the ever-increasing cyber security risks.

If cybercrime were a country, its economy would be the third largest in the world, behind the USA and China. Only a few months ago, we saw one of the world’s biggest building supply manufacturers, Knauf, issue a statement to the market announcing that it had been victim of a cyber-attack. The attack was so big that they had been forced to close many of their systems for several days while they isolated the attack and assessed the damage.

Cyberattacks can have disastrous consequences. In 2022 the global average cost of a data breach hit an all-time high of $4.35 million for the organisations in the study.

The cost of cyber-attacks isn’t only financial, with companies having to spend time recovering from the attack, as well as re-establishing trust with customers and potentially repairing any subsequent damage to their brand.

Even some of the most tech-savvy individuals and businesses can fall victim to cyber-crime. Criminals use a range of tactics, from hacking, aiming to access and potentially sell valuable data, to malware or ransomware attacks. The latter two methods involve a form of malicious software being installed within a system, usually via a phishing scam, and then encrypting the business’s data.

Online security is similar to climate change in that most people ignore it until they have been affected, and, by then, it is often, unfortunately, too late. Clearly, businesses seeking to digitalise their operations need to be partnering with software providers who understand the risks to ensure their businesses are protected.

For our part, ECI has a dedicated team of full-time security professionals and spends millions of dollars a year on the best security tools on the market to ensure that customers are protected against threats, so it’s worth asking your technology providers if they do the same.