By now, most business leaders in New York have gotten the message loud and clear about the need for strong cybersecurity.   

There’s just one problem:

Businesses in New York — and across the country — are still having a tough time finding and employing qualified cybersecurity professionals to protect their digital assets. As we explained in a recent article, 93 percent of security professionals recently claimed it’s more difficult to hire security staff today than it was two years ago. And 57 percent of companies now lack appropriate security operations staffing.

Consider this, too:  

In a 12-month period ending in September, 2017, U.S. employers posted 285,681 cybersecurity job openings. And the areas with the largest number of cybersecurity openings are New York, Washington, D.C. and Chicago. The majority of job postings are for operations and maintenance, protection and demand, analysis and security provisioning.

This is particularly troubling for New York, when considering that it’s now the top target for ransomware in the world. Businesses that do not take active measures to protect their networks are at a much higher risk of getting infected with crippling malware.

What’s more, time is running out for New York businesses to protect their networks.  Businesses across the state may soon have to comply with the Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security Act (SHIELD) — a bill, recently proposed by New York AG Eric T. Schneiderman — that would impose stricter data security requirements for companies.

If passed into law, the SHIELD Act would cover any business that holds sensitive data for New York residents; require all covered businesses to implement “reasonable” administrative, technical and physical safeguards to protect sensitive data; expand data breach notification obligations; and deem inadequate cybersecurity to be a violation of General Business Law Section 349, to name a few changes.

So as you can see, we have a challenge here. Legislators want business owners to protect their sensitive data. Consumers want businesses to protect their data. And business owners want to protect their data, too. But it’s not possible to do so when you can’t afford for top-tier cybersecurity help.

The truth, though, is that high quality — and affordable — cybersecurity assistance is within the reach of all New York organizations. The solution is to consult with a third party managed services provider (MSP) like Apex Technology Services.

Apex can provide direct access to highly-qualified security professionals, along with the cutting-edge resources that are needed for advanced threat discovery, analysis and mitigation as well as comprehensive employee training — all at a price that aligns with an SMB budget.

So don’t wait for a data breach to get the protection that your business needs. To learn more about how Apex can help your organization, click here.  

Here are some of the areas all organizations looking to promote a cybersecurity culture need to focus on.

1.    Cybersecurity training must be done regularly.

2.    Auditing and documentation must be performed regularly to ensure systems are secure.

3.    Anomaly detection should be running constantly to detect threats as they emerge.

4.    Penetration testing shows if systems can easily be reached from the outside. Here is a case where this test might have saved two company’s’ reputations from being destroyed.

5.    Network forensics for when a breach eventually occurs. The bad guys always seem to get in eventually.

6.    An action plan to follow when a breach does occur. Once it happens, few will have the clear heads needed to “wing it” correctly. Equifax botched it’s response in what is being called a PR catastrophe.

To ensure your organization is safe – even if you have internal IT, hire an experienced MSP or MSSP like Apex Technology Services.