When working with small and medium-sized businesses on cybersecurity, the question is how to make these networks vulnerable to attacks when budget and resources aren’t always available.
Small businesses often face unique cybersecurity challenges. According to a report from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), 88% of small business owners I feel vulnerable to cyber attacks. These companies are frequently targeted because they have limited resources for advanced cybersecurity measures, making them attractive targets for cybercriminals.
As small businesses become increasingly targeted by cybercriminals, dakota state university (DSU) is stepping up to strengthen the cybersecurity front.guided by Joel WonautkaExecutive Director, DSU Applied Research Institute, Session at Global Security Exchange GSX 2023 Attracted attention at the event A wide range of university initiatives. From strengthening the work of our cyber graduates to building partnerships with intelligence agencies, DSU continues to make progress. A key highlight is the SBA-funded Cyber Safe SD initiative, which emphasizes protecting small businesses. Through rigorous penetration testing and subsequent remediation, DSU presents its results, positioning the Midwest as the next potential cyber hub.
Mr. Wonoutka elaborated on several takeaways from the session, stating that if small and medium-sized businesses focus on effectively implementing a few basic principles and strategies, they won’t need to deploy large numbers of expensive cybersecurity solutions. He emphasized that no.
Joel’s thoughts
“Everyone will learn something from today. Go back and make sure you have a secure password policy and protect your workforce, whether you have 10, 500 or 500,000 employees. You just have to educate them. You know, we see that a lot in corporate structures, but it’s not reflected as much in small businesses.”
Dakota State University’s Role in Cybersecurity
“So there are a few different aspects. The first is that we are raising awareness about South Dakota and the growing cybersecurity industry there. Specifically, Dakota State University has Madison CyberLab and We have applied research, collaborate with industry partners and federal agencies, and are focused on ensuring national security. Dakota State has one of the nation’s top flank security programs. Over the last year, we’ve been working on a project to help small and medium-sized businesses learn a little bit about their infrastructure and how to protect it from a cybersecurity perspective.”
Building a Cyber-Resilient Workforce in South Dakota
“Dakota has a very strong cybersecurity program. We currently graduate 800 graduates per year from just the three prominent cybersecurity programs offered in the state. Many of our graduates They search all over the country, and they go to work at top companies like Google, and work in government agencies. In addition to building facilities that support that way of working, we believe that many of these companies are a great place to come and set up shop. We encourage our graduates to stay in South Dakota. We’re really looking forward to giving them a place to raise their families.”
Address small business network vulnerabilities
“What we’re seeing in small and medium-sized businesses in the region is that the IT professionals working in these companies don’t have the ability to focus on everything they need to focus on. We’re trying to provide information on where to start looking to help you secure your network. Small and medium-sized businesses vary in number from 3 to 500 employees, which is why we want to make sure everyone knows their network is vulnerable. I would like to be able to recognize it.
We then provide solutions on how to secure your network and make sure that what we really care about most is the ability to keep your devices up to date. We’re investigating a 2008 vulnerability that can be exploited in some of these small business networks. And really, they just don’t have the ability to know what’s on the network and maintain and ensure that everything is up to date. So if anyone learns anything from today, it’s to go back in time and make sure you have secure password policies and ensure that your employees, whether he has 10 or 500 or 500,000 employees, I would like to say that it is important to educate the staff.
This is often reflected in corporate structures, but not so much in small and medium-sized enterprises. We’re just trying to raise awareness so that other small businesses can bring it home when they go back home. ”
Migrate to a cloud-based platform for cost efficiency
“Hardware is expensive, right? I mean, small businesses may not have the financial capacity to do it. One of the things we’re really stressing about some of the businesses that can make it happen. One is moving to a cloud-based platform where you don’t have to support as many infrastructure components. You still have those components, but you can offload some of them instead of paying upfront for setting up the entire network. It will be a monthly subscription.
This is a little bit appealing, especially for some small businesses that are just starting out.
It’s much easier for small businesses to get up and running. You may not be able to hire IT personnel right away. Sometimes you come across owners of IT companies who are just very good at computers and have done so, but that is not their main job, function, or career. So being able to offload it and have him up and running within a week is attractive to small businesses. It’s great that we can do that now, but what we’re seeing is some legacy systems. I think it’s all a matter of timing because they haven’t made that jump or that leap into the cloud yet. Not many people educate themselves on what it does for their business. Especially if there are no people in the industry.
We just recently started something at Dakota State University. We partnered with Case New Holland. A tractor manufacturer with a large presence in South Dakota. And we’re just starting to look at how AI plays into some of their research. Much of it is controlled by an entire computer system on the tractor.
What does it mean if that computer system is somehow compromised? Our industry’s crop. It’s clear that agriculture is one of the largest pieces of infrastructure in South Dakota. We’re very interested in making sure it’s properly protected. ”
Article by James Kent