Choosing to keep your business transactions offline is no longer an option in this digital age. However, as more and more businesses realize the importance of building their online presence, the possibility of getting attacked by cyber criminals come along with it.

Rather than trying to avoid data security breaches by not taking your business online and risk getting left behind, businesses today should be vigilant in ensuring that your data and customers’ information are secured regardless if you’re a big corporation or a small business.

Ignoring the possibility that these data breaches can happen to your business is one of the biggest and most costly mistakes that you can make. Take a look at these statistics that could be your wake up call to your business vulnerability so that you can take cybersecurity more seriously:

  1. If you’re in government, retail, and technology, you’re popular targets of cyber threats. According to Forrester’s report, 95% of breached records in 2016 alone came from those three industries. Why? It’s not necessarily because of less diligence in protection, but because of the higher level of personal identity information in their records.
  2. Cyber attacks can happen to any business size, but small businesses are more at risk reporting 43% of attacks. As much as 60% of SMBs go out of business just after six months of a cyber attack.
  3. Since 2017, cycle crime damages cost the world $1 trillion according to Cyber Security Venture’s Cybercrime Report. It’s predicted to reach a staggering cost of $6 trillion annually beyond 2021. This cost represented the largest transfer of economic wealth in history, even surpassing the illegal drug trade.
  4. If you think cyber threats can only come from outsider hackers, think again. Verizon’s 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report says that internal actors were behind 25% of the cyber attacks that they studied. IBM says that 47% of companies verified that a malicious insider caused a breach.
  5. Despite the notoriety of cyber threats in various businesses, a lot of companies are still not prepared to handle it. Only 38% of global organizations claim they’re prepared to handle a sophisticated attack based on a report by ISACA International.

Cyber attacks happen every day—from data theft, information leakage, to credit card fraud, and they can choose to do it to big or small companies in any industry. Remember, cybercriminals get more sophisticated as time passes, so no business is secure unless you become vigilant and be one step ahead of them.

Being aware that you are vulnerable to an attack and learning from all the mistakes of other companies is the first step. Ensure that your organization is prepared with a solid plan and team to avoid cyber attacks. Some ways to manage cybersecurity threats are regularly assessing your IT infrastructure, implementing strong data encryption, having a dedicated IT support team with an emergency response plan, or partnering with a reliable resource company to name a few.