Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Security:  Is Your Business Protected? Probably Not. 

The small business cyber security world is changing, and has changed rapidly over recent years. While small business owners think their networks are secure, thousands of businesses continue to be hacked every week. Read on to learn how your current network is likely not secure, and what you can do about protecting it immediately.

Antivirus Software for Small Business is Deceiving

Most small businesses and homes have an anti-virus, and antivirus software tends to be one of the first things business owners reach for, thinking it’s all they need for online protection.  They thing that a firewall and anti-virus software are enough to protect them.  They’re wrong.

Anti-virus programs are great at stopping known virus definitions. New viruses, however, are born every day. In addition, more software is being created than ever before, creating more opportunities for holes in your cyber defense. You constantly have to stay up to date.  Additionally, cyber criminals test their attacks against anti-virus and firewalls first in a lot of cases so their attack is designed to bypass these from the get-go.  Another problem with anti-virus is that it’s checking a static database for known previous documented threats, it’s not looking for unusual behaviors on your network nor is it being monitored by live cyber security agents.

Your printer’s driver or adobe software that your employees never bothered to update could be that vulnerability. Endpoints like IOT devices (smart fridges and thermostats), with often atrocious security, could easily be the doorway into your network. While an antivirus is a lot better than nothing, it is a false sense of security that represents the true danger.

Next-Gen Anti-virus uses both Artificial and Human intelligence. This means having the most up to date definitions using a machine learning algorithm that can detect for anomalous behavior. For example, Cynet’s Cyber Security AI is trained to look for virus-like behavior and updated daily with the latest threat definitions. The challenge behind an AI is at first you’ll have a lot of false positives, which is why a Security Operations Center (SOC) Analyst is needed to remotely “train” on these kinds of systems for months. This allows the systems to learn the types of traffic that is normal versus abnormal on your network, then continue to monitor for abnormalities and proactively eliminate them.

Firewalls for Small Business Network Protection

Firewalls are another mode of protection small business owners turn to for further protection of their network. Why small businesses think they are secure:  this is a preventative measure stopping unauthorized programs from entering the network. Why they are not secure: Here is a link to a beautiful diagram CISCO put together of vulnerability examples in firewalls. Firewalls stop unauthorized programs from entering the network. But what happens when something slips through, perhaps due to user error i.e. clicking on a fake Avast/Kaspersky/Norton antivirus popup?

https://learn-umbrella.cisco.com/solution-briefs/why-firewalls-and-antivirus-are-not-enough

In essence, once a threat is in and past the firewall, it is in your network and able to sniff up the data that passes through it.

The IT Consultation Guy for Small Businesses: Are You Wasting Time & Money?

Do you cringe at the bill your IT guy sends you every month? Many small businesses don’t have the time or energy to focus on securing their systems, so they hire or outsource the work to individuals or agencies claiming to be experts in their niche.

Why small businesses think they are secure: In an anonymous poll, a number of SMB owners responded with why they thought they were secure with their “IT guy”.

1. The IT guy is really savvy and keeps us up to date with the latest security & anti-virus.
2. The IT guy keeps the business backbone functioning and is trusted to know how to do all tasks related to this role.
3. I have been assured by both my IT guy and our 3rd party vendor technical specialist that our system is completely secure.

Why they are not secure: Internal IT guys are a “jack of all trades” for small businesses. They cannot only be “just” the security guy; they have to be the hardware and networking guy, the updater, the troubleshooter, and vendor negotiator. Outside IT guys who specialize in cyber security are so in demand that they are incredibly expensive. Generalist outside IT guys are incentivized to over promise on their 3rd party solutions, but at the end of the day, in order to run a secure system, you need to be able to look at the network traffic, have a platform to monitor it efficiently, and a human that can both verify/stop the attack in its tracks and avoid blowing up the owner’s phone/email with false alarms.

Does your Small Business Serve the Military or Government? 

As a small business owner if you want to be a contractor for the government, then you should look into getting the Cyber Security Maturity Model Certification (CMMC). The CMMC is currently only required for the DoD, but could become the official standard for the rest of the government as its first pilot. Here is a FAQ from the source: https://www.acq.osd.mil/cmmc/faq.html for answers to basic questions. June 2020 is when the requirements will start to be included for requests for information. Government RFPs will contain the level of CMMC certification required, with higher level requirements for more sensitive jobs. Details were just posted in January 2020, so there’s still time if a company needs to update their security by then.  Next generation cyber security protection systems provide different levels of compliance for the CMMC.

Affordable AI Cybersecurity Plans for Small Medium Business Owners: Take Action Now

Most options are out of reach financially speaking. To be able to afford a security operations center analyst and an enterprise platform for Managed Detection and Response (EDR) / SIEM, the result is the same, you’ll need a significant budget.  

To that end Transmosis developed CyberOps.

Small businesses are stuck in a world between weak consumer Antivirus solutions and the expensive enterprise software market.  Sophisticated cyber security platforms have traditionally been out of reach for small businesses where many owners falsely believe they are safe from attack.  The CyberOps mission is to protect every small business with the same sophisticated cyber security that Fortune 1000 companies use.

CyberOps is a military grade cyber security platform designed to protect small businesses from cyber attack.  The CyberOps platform is comprised of an autonomous breach detection software combined with a 24/7 live Security Operations Center to continuously monitor and defend small businesses against cyber attack.

“I had no idea how vulnerable my company was. I thought Antivirus was enough and that couldn’t have been farther  from the truth. CyberOps truly locks us down from Cyber Criminals.”

– Alexander Rowland, CEO, NewTropic Corp.

To learn how Transmosis can provide maximum protection for your small business cybersecurity visit https://www.transmosis.com/cyberops. 

About the Author:

Chase Norlin is the CEO of Transmosis, a nationally recognized Cyber Security Workforce Developer, and was previously the founder and CEO of Alphabird, named the 8th fastest growing company in America and the #1 fastest growing company in Silicon Valley by Inc. Magazine. Norlin is a serial technology entrepreneur that founded the Internet’s first online video-sharing platform and one of the first video search engines, photo sharing services, and video ad networks.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————-