DAYTON — A report by the cybersecurity firm Total Assure found that a small business in the United States is hit with a cyberattack every seven seconds. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose was in Dayton on Thursday to talk to local business owners about how to avoid these kinds of schemes.
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LaRose brought together cybersecurity experts with the focus on protecting small businesses.
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Nikhil Kalni, Chief Information Officer at Reynolds & Reynolds, said there’s a “myth” in the small business community about being “too small” to be a target for cyber criminals.
“I don’t think there’s any such thing, really. Bad guys are going after ease, not size,” Kalani said.
For the more than 100 small business owners on Thursday, experts laid out different cyber scams criminals try, and how they’re doing them.
“They are systematically going after everyone, and you don’t have to be too small because they can get that one hook,” Mark Visger, of the University of Dayton’s Center for Cybersecurity and Data Intelligence, said. “They’ll send out 5 million. If they get a 1% hit rate, that is a fairly big payday for them.”
Thursday’s seminar was the sixth that LaRose’s office has held across the state.
While many look to him as the chief election officer, his office is also where people go to start the paperwork required for a small business. With so much life online now, small businesses are targets for bad actors.
“They’re gonna go after the small machine shop, the local landscaper, the local restaurant owner, and then try to extract, you know, a couple $100,000 ransom out of them in order to get their systems back,” LaRose said. “We don’t want to see that happen to Ohio businesses, and so that’s what this is all about.”
He told News Center 7’s Xavier Hershovitz that he hopes that this makes what can be a daunting task for a small business owner an obtainable goal.
“You don’t have to be the most secure in the world. You can’t just leave your door open, though,” LaRose said. “And really, what we’re hoping to empower them with is just those first few steps that they can take on their cybersecurity journey.”
LaRose’s office put together a booklet with tips and tricks for business owners. It can be viewed here.
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