To begin with, small businesses are becoming the main focus by hackers. One main reason is small businesses do not believe it can happen to them because of all the big businesses that are out there serving a similar customer. When small businesses go electronic the main focus is not cyber security. One reason why is due to the income level of the business. Most small businesses are even taking a financial leap of faith, when going electronic connecting there business to the internet. Oftentimes small businesses are gambling on if they have enough customers to go beyond a credit card machine let alone internet visibility, due to cost of website maintenance and website security, while keeping a store location up and running. Jim Throneburg invented Thorlos socks in 1980 with a slogan of “Caretakers of the world’s feet”. When you think of sock companies in the 1980’s research shows the biggest company at that time was Sock Shop which had 52 stores by 1987 also equipped with internet security and monitoring and not reports of being hacked.
Thorlos a smaller company was hacked due to vulnerability. Hackers had been intercepting information on the Web after a customer reported fraudulent credit card charges (Buhayar & Bunn, 2013). In my opinion smaller businesses are more likely to be hacked due to lack of proper investment in cybersecurity. Creating a risk of losing customers, bad press, and, ultimately in the worst case a collapsing business. Big businesses are also still at risk of being and hacked and have been hacked. “Cyber risks have gained renewed national attention after revelations about a breach of a U.S. Federal Reserve website, intrusions at the New York Times attributed to Chinese hackers and a wave of so-called denial of service attacks on the biggest U.S. banks and payment networks. Microsoft Corp. and Facebook Inc. have been targeted by malicious software” (Buhayar & Bunn, 2013). Furthermore, aligning technology with customers’ needs is also very important. Every business does not need the same technology. Depending on the customer and amount of customers served should be a main focus in determining technology needed.
Technology plays an important part in helping organizations meet objectives. With that being said technology and the overall business strategic plan should be aligned. According to AMR research 45 percent of companies require the same customer to place orders through separate systems; 60 percent have limited or no integration between front and back office systems; 90 percent struggle with customer responsiveness, visibility, automation, and data quality; and only 20 percent of customers data is centrally managed (Rang, 2003). This tells me technology is not properly aligned to the customer’s needs. Only 20 percent of customer data is centrally managed leaving more opportunity for customer information to be sold and fraud to occur. A few things that should be done to fix this problem are having a central data repository, Supports a core business application utilized for handling multiple business functions within an organization and Information technology infrastructure and technology management.
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References
- Buhayar, N., & Bunn, E. (2013, March 20). Sock maker hack shows small-business risk chased by aig. Retrieved from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-20/aig-among-insurers-seeking-more-sales-as-service
- Rang, J. (2003, September ). Are your it and strategic plans aligned. Retrieved from http://www.asaecenter.org/Resources/articledetail.cfm?ItemNumber=13514
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Electronic Connection Risk for Small Business. (2018, Mar 14). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/electronic-connection-risk-for-small-business/
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