After the pandemic, the world turned into a digital World. But with this digital surge came an expanded playground for cybercriminals. Despite the misconception that only large enterprises face cyber threats, Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) are alarmingly vulnerable. Lacking resources and expertise, SMBs often fall prey to cyber assaults. Studies underline this vulnerability, revealing that a significant portion of cybercrimes target SMBs, with devastating consequences such as operational shutdowns and compromised data.
Research cited by the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman underscores the perilous misbelief harbored by many small businesses — 87% feel secure solely because they use antivirus software. Contrary to this notion, SMBs are far from immune to cyber threats. Studies indicate that a substantial portion of cybercrimes target small businesses, with devastating consequences. The fallout from breaches, such as the 2017 Ransomware attacks, saw a staggering 22% of affected small businesses forced to cease operations. Alarming statistics from various sources, including Verizon’s 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report and reports from MYOB, emphasize the vulnerability of SMBs, where nearly half of all breaches affect small and midsize businesses.
To combat this, SMBs must embed Cyber Security Best Practices as a cultural imperative. Initiatives like continuous data backups, comprehensive security awareness, robust password policies, system updates, and adherence to security controls are crucial. Neglecting these measures could leave the door wide open for hackers, jeopardizing sensitive data and the very existence of these businesses.
Here are the top 4 cybersecurity products for the SMEs:
WiJungle Firewall: WiJungle is an Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning-based Unified Network Security Gateway product. It enables organizations to manage and safeguard their entire network by means of a single window. Product is the world’s first comprehensive appliance that eradicates the need to have standalone security silos like Network Firewall, Web Application Firewall, Routers, Proxy Servers, SD-WAN, DLP, Hotspot Gateway, Vulnerability Assessment, etc. and reduces the capital investment of an organization by up to 60 percent. It further simplifies the day-day management and scalability challenges. The product has 42 variants to serve all levels of organizations.
Palo Alto Networks: Palo Alto Networks ML-Powered Next-Generation Firewalls are easy to deploy into your organization’s network and purposefully designed for simplicity, automation, and integration. Available in hardware and virtualized platforms with prevention-focused architecture that’s easy to deploy and operate–and incredibly effective.PA Series NGFW provides consistent protection to your entire network perimeter–from your headquarters and office campus, branch offices, and data center to your mobile and remote workforce.
Sophos: Sophos XG Firewall provides comprehensive next-generation firewall protection that exposes hidden risks, blocks unknown threats, and automates response. Sophos is protecting more than 400,000 organizations of all sizes in more than 150 countries from today’s most advanced cyber threats. Powered by SophosLabs, our cloud-native and AI-enhanced solutions are able to adapt and evolve to secure endpoints and networks against never-before-seen cybercriminal tactics and techniques. Multi-Core architecture appliances with a high no. of expansion slots make scalability a convenience.
Fortinet: FortiGate NGFWs enable security-driven networking and consolidate industry-leading security capabilities such as intrusion prevention system (IPS), web filtering, secure sockets layer (SSL) inspection, and automated threat protection. Fortinet NGFWs meet the performance needs of highly scalable, hybrid IT architectures, enabling organizations to reduce complexity and manage security risks. They are powered by artificial intelligence (AI)-driven FortiGuard Labs and deliver proactive threat protection with high-performance to stay ahead of the rapidly expanding threat landscape.
