Are Your SMB Customers Safe From Cyber Attack?

By Tim Gillen, CNE, MCP, President, Terrapin Networks and ASCII Group Member Since 2010

As managed services providers (MSPs), it’s easy to read about the large-scale hacks and credit card breaches and think, “Well, that can’t happen to my customers.” However, while the stories about hacks that affect giant corporations are the ones we tend to hear about, it’s still important to ask yourself: Are my customers — the small-to-medium-sized businesses — susceptible to a similar attack?

If you care about your customers (of course you do!) chances are you have already installed proper perimeter security on their networks: starting with a firewall or UTM (unified threat management) device, then on to the desktop with top-line antivirus/antispyware software from a tier-1 provider, and on to email spam and malware protection whether premise or hosted. It just makes sense; there’s many ways to provide protection, and we definitely do not leave our customers with nothing, just dangling in the wind. We have ensured that something is there to protect them. But that doesn’t make it any less unsettling when the big players — with presumably the most state-of-the-art computer security available — are still getting tagged by prowling hackers.

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