Are you taking your small business asset security seriously enough?

Micro, small, and medium sized businesses form the backbone of the global economy. So much so, in fact, that estimates by the United Nations in 2023 suggest they account for up to 90% of global business, 60–70% of employment, and 50% of Gross Domestic Product worldwide. But, while mighty in collective, it is well documented that small businesses at the individual level are often the most vulnerable to threats across both the digital and physical realms. An estimated 82% of ransomware attacks in 2021 were against companies with fewer than 1,000 employees. And Gartner predicts that, by the end of 2024, 75% of CEOs will be personally liable for cyber-physical security incidents. Protecting your business’s valuable assets effectively, then, has never been more pressing.

Decoding the threats

Threats to business can come from both inside and outside. And the impact can be considerable. Business downtime, according to a recent report by Blackfog, was the biggest impact of an attack for Small and Medium sized Businesses (SMBs), affecting 58% of respondents. This was followed by the impact on customer trust and retention, with a third of all respondents reporting that the incidents resulted in the loss of customers: whether from willing employees looking for their own gain or engineered externally through social engineering attacks, including phishing or tailgating. According to reports, employees of small businesses experience 350% more social engineering attacks than those at larger enterprises. Different types of assets at risk can vary from industry to industry. For example, for financial services and healthcare, unsurprisingly, personal and financial data are often the prize targets, either held for ransom or simply sold on the dark web. In manufacturing and technology businesses, however, the target is typically intellectual property and trade secrets around proprietary technology.

Safeguarding your business

Whether threats are from within or from outside the business, it is important you adopt a well- considered, holistic approach to security. This should include an assessment of the efficacy, scalability, and appropriateness of the potential measures. One cost-effective, user-friendly, and foolproof solution to protecting a variety of different business assets is via biometric data. Unique to individuals, biometrics eliminates the need for other physical forms of identification, such as cards, PINs, or passwords, which can be replicated, illegally obtained, or hacked. It can also result in long-term cost savings from the elimination of access card issuance and associated operational expenditures. Furthermore, modern devices are equipped with environmentally friendly deep sleep power-saving modes. They are also capable of processing over 45 users per minute, optimizing efficiency and user experience.

Access control options include physical access control which leverages highly accurate biometric algorithms on secure robust devices to reliably protect the perimeters of your premises, ensuring only authorized person access. Logical access control, to secure your networks, computer systems, or data, offers advanced multifactor authentication capabilities for business applications, Active Directory, Single Sign On, or Identity Access Management systems. Leveraging biometric data to determine access mitigates potential risks such as credential stuffing and brute-force attacks, even if credentials are compromised through, for example, phishing.

Of course, combining both solutions into a single biometric credential simplifies threat management even further, providing a comprehensive and robust security approach. This includes, for example, integrated threat signals, such as alerts, when login credentials are used outside the facility.

Small and medium sized businesses cannot afford to fall prey to a security breach when data breaches alone cost SMBs an average of $3M+ per incident. Adopting a unique and holistic approach to business security through the medium of biometric technology can be the game-changer for keeping your business secure.

Contact us

For more information on how IDEMIA Public Security’s biometric solutions can enhance your security posture and operational efficiency, visit www.idemia.com or contact our sales team.

Key statistics

• 48% of SMBs globally experienced a cybersecurity incident in the past year, 26% of US SMBs encountering multiple types of breaches, such as distributed denial-of-service attacks, data loss, ransomware, and credential theft (Help Net Security).
• 39% of organizations affected by a security attack lost customer data (Blackfog).
• Average cost of a data breach for SMBs: $2.98 million (CrowdStrike).
• External attackers were top cause of security or data breaches for US SMBs in 2023 (ITRC Business Impact Report)