Burnt Orange Solutions discusses the Bell Canada hacks.

Our Trusted Saskatoon IT professionals at Burnt Orange Solutions promise to have a one-hour response time for all your IT support needs. Honesty and respect are important to us. We pride themselves on ensuring our clients understand their IT concerns by providing a straightforward and reliable solution with exceptional service. In our latest IT tip, owner Gareth discusses the recent Bell Canada hacks.

Bell Canada Hacks

Recently, Bell Canada admitted that hackers accessed customer information for the second time in eight months. This revelation follows a May 2017 Bell attack which compromised approximately 1.9 million customer e-mails and some 1,700 names and phone numbers. Bell estimates that this latest attack affects the information of about 100,000 customers.

This problem isn’t unique to Bell. For instance, all 3 billion of Yahoo’s email accounts had their information compromised in a 2016 hack.

Considering these internet giants with dedicated security teams and systems can be bloodied by anonymous hackers, what does this mean for the IT security of Saskatoon’s small and medium-sized businesses (SMB)?

The Data Security Situation in Saskatoon

So what do Bell Canada hacks mean to you in Saskatoon? The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, citing a report from Intel, reported that Canada loses 0.17% of GDP to cybercrime, around $3.12 billion per year – this is a serious economic issue.

An IBM-Ponemon Institute study found that in 2017 the average total cost to 27 victim companies was $5.78 million. Note that this study excluded businesses with over 1,000,000 records – in other words, it was SMB suffering this level of cost. For companies with less than 10,000 records (i.e. small businesses), the cost was around $3.81 million.

Of the breaches at Canadian firms studied:

48% were malicious or criminal attacks
30% were due to employee negligence
22% were system or process failures

What are you Doing to Protect your Client Information?

Most SMB are not going to be personally attacked like Bell was, but we know from the above studies that they are still affected by breaches. Your business may not be attacked specifically, but hackers are using very clever software to sniff out cracks they can exploit, and one day it will be your turn.

Is your head in the sand or are you attacking this threat with solid security and procedures? Most business owners and/or business managers do not know their IT elbow from the computer ass. It’s not their fault – I sit here writing this and I have trouble spelling acoontin, but I do know about IT and Data Security. No one can be an expert on everything – that is why I have a bookkeeper and accountant for instance (and spell-check of course!).

If you are a small or medium business it is time to get your head out of the sand. Rather than risk losing $3.81 million or more give us a call. Burnt Orange Solutions are your Saskatoon data security experts, and will ensure you are protected.

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