Security Threats to Startups

A lot goes in when you start a company (tell us about it!). Since everything is a new beginning, there are only limited things that a start-up can focus on. And often, security is not a high-priority agenda for most. This is common knowledge and is unfortunately misused by most perpetrators.

As is the case with most security breaches, they happen when you are most susceptible. With so much going on for a start-up, one does not get the time to focus on the security elements. As data suggest, while many security breaches are done on purpose by cyber criminals, there have been several incidents of security lapses purely because of human error.

The biggest asset of a start-up usually is its IP, so it is not necessary that an organization has to be significant in size or revenue to be a potential target of cyber thefts. In the dark web, data is always valued, big or small. Based on industry estimates, 1 out of 3 start-ups has a security breach in the first six months of operations.

Having an online presence has helped many small organizations achieve scale. One can hardly think of a company that does not have an online presence, be its website, social media handles, eCommerce portal or tie-ups with giant business aggregators. But an online presence also makes them vulnerable.

Moreover, while there are a lot of positive outcomes of remote work, the last two years also saw a sharp rise in security incidents, and start-ups were no exception.

As a start-up, most organizations are conservative about spending money on anything not strategically important to the business. But as the case has been laid out, security has to be part of that broader vision, whether we like it or not. Some estimates suggest that a small company should invest at least 5-10% of their IT budget in security.