SMEs victims of IT vulnerabilities?

The company Rational (kitchen manufacturer) files for insolvency. Not so remarkable these days. It can happen. If you look behind the scenes, a power failure is said to be to blame - what happened here?

A power failure caused a loss of data that affected the production machines. A backup of the software and production data could not be imported. After several weeks of recovery attempts, the machines could no longer be put back into operation - GAME OVER. 

This is just one example of many unfavourable concatenations, one might think. Another case in Switzerland: the 100-year-old window manufacturer Swisswindows accidentally fell victim to ransomware (Ryuk encryption Trojan) in 2019. Complete loss of data within minutes, production could no longer be started up - insolvency followed.

If you look at the statistics on the increase in attacks on IT infrastructure (from 7%-2011 to 48%-2021 of the companies surveyed were attacked), it is actually surprising that we do not hear about such cases on a daily basis. Just because we are not directly aware of it, it still happens.

The first step that SMEs should take is simply to think about who is actually responsible for IT in the company and whether this is exactly what needs more attention. What if my company suddenly couldn't even compose an email? In times when pulling the data plug could have immense consequences for a family business that has been built up over decades, you should invest a little time in this topic.

Source Statista - Survey: Has your company had any concrete evidence of cyber attacks or data theft in the past three years?