Small Business: Protecting the Backbone of Our Global Economy

By Tony Krzyzewski


Small business forms the backbone of the economy of many nations, filling essential service roles that we depend on for our daily comforts and provide us with essential supplies that we rely upon. These small businesses frequently provide essential supply chain services to larger organisations and need to be considered as a core part of our economies.

For a majority of these small businesses, cybersecurity is not very high on the action list. This is either through a lack of awareness, a lack of skills, or a lack of funds. This is extremely concerning considering the fact that the number of scam and cybersecurity attacks against these small businesses is growing at an alarming rate. In my own country of New Zealand, the number of reported scam and financial fraud incidents rose by 230% from Quarter 3 to Quarter 4 in 2018, with a year on year increase of 205%. We have no choice but to redouble our efforts to protect our smaller businesses from these attacks.

The Global Cyber Alliance Cybersecurity Toolkit for Small Business is being lauded around the world for bringing together tools that help small businesses reduce their level of cybersecurity-related risk, but we need to remember that many of our small businesses do not have sufficient knowledge or resources to use the toolkit by themselves.

In order to increase awareness we ask those with cybersecurity and IT knowledge to adopt a small business that they depend on for their daily comfort or essential services. Use this knowledge and experience, together with the free tools within the Cybersecurity Toolkit; we can help small businesses work through actions that will reduce their risk level.

In March 2019, as Ambassador for the Global Cyber Alliance, I initiated an ‘Adopt a Small Business Month’ program which was taken up by individuals and groups across the world, but this activity does not need to stop at the end of March.

If you want to help, please visit the Cybersecurity Toolkit website at https://gcatoolkit.org for more information, then go assist someone that you depend upon. Together, we can make a difference.

The author, Tony Krzyzewski, is a GCA Ambassador and the Director of SAM for Compliance. You can follow him on Twitter @tonyk_nz or connect with him on LinkedIn.