The Martinsville Henry County Chamber of Commerce and the New College Institute (NCI) partnered to offer a free workshop on Cybersecurity on May 9. Dr. Ken Russell led the class, stressing the importance of protecting your business and detailing how cybersecurity is being used to assist law enforcement.
Rusell discussed the basics of staying safe online and the impact that cyberattacks can have on businesses.
“One-half of IT managers admit to being hit,” said Russell. Only a fourth of managers retrieved data by trying to appease the attackers with finances. Generally, the hackers will leave a way to contact them. When contact is established, money will be asked for in exchange for restoring their data.
“Don’t believe it. Only a quarter of the time do they get their data back,” Russell said, and noted that 82 percent of attacks target companies with 1,000 employees or fewer. The average cost to remediate the attack, plus the lost revenue from the attack, totals $76,000.
Russell pointed out that for a small business, this amount can be extremely damaging. Any business can become the target of an attack, whether they are small or larger multi-billion-dollar entities like Target.
One of the most notable attacks was on Equifax, Russell said, adding that hackers have made businesses out of hacking companies.
“People hack because they think there’s money to be made,” he said.
One of the only ways to combat this is by having better cybersecurity and knowing how to handle cybercrime.
An ongoing initiative is underway to provide education about cyber security and to bring more workers into the field, and NCI is working to bolster interest in jobs related to the field by developing new programs to promote its CyberSAFE initiative. The NCI CyberSAFE car will travel to various K-12 schools to help communicate the cybersecurity threat.
NCI also partners with companies, legal teams, and state/federal agencies, as well as works with the Piedmont Regional Criminal Justice Training Academy to offer simulated training and teach law enforcement officers about new technology that can help save lives.
Spatial analytics tools, with the help of AIRIA, are also currently being implemented to provide data about active devices in an area.
“If you have a large campus, then spatial analytics will continue to play a large role in what we are doing with cybersecurity,” Russell said of the tool that can be used to assist law enforcement identify the location of victims in emergency situations.
One of the most important parts of cybersecurity is assembling the right incident response team.
The chamber is hosting two more workshops at NCI:
“Building Stronger Teams” on May 23 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.:
Marketing versus Advertising, the role of First Party Data” on May 30 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
To register for an upcoming workshop, email mhccoc@mhcchamber.com.
