It’s an unlikely situation for a conversation about cyber security however on Black Friday, this was my reality. An appointment with my podiatrist is usually where we catch up on the latest exploits of our lives and reiterate the importance of foot care on overall health.
This particular conversation started with him telling me about a Black Friday deal on iPads. He’d done his due diligence and was pleased that what he had found was a deal. The iPad, he revealed, was to support a planned transformation of his customer management system. The small but very well established practice still uses on premise software to manage customer data and the plan is to move to a cloud-based solution.
Now full disclosure, I’m not a cyber-expert. I get to work alongside some of the brightest cyber stars in the world. And this has made me view the world around me very differently.
My natural curiosity kicked in and I asked him a number of questions about security, back-ups, we chatted about GDPR and a host of other considerations. Of course he’s not had any experience of this, his expertise is feet not cyber. There’s no one advising him. Just a company that’s selling a solution. Now I don’t know if it’s good or bad and I stressed this. But I armed him with a few questions to ask from back-up of data in the event of the supplier running into financial difficulty, to liability in the event of a data privacy issue.
The critical question though – was what would be the impact on his business if he couldn’t access customer information. Or if customer privacy was compromised – what impact would that have?
It was the ‘penny drop’ moment. The value of getting cyber right was realised. While the rush was on to buy the iPad to support the new software, there was a realisation that it would be worth taking a little bit of time to make sure all the checks were done.
The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) offers a helpline for small business owners to obtain advice on cyber security, so that members can focus on growing their business safely and securely. Make your New Year’s resolution to improve your cyber security by taking advantage of the valuable support service available from the FSB.
Have you had your free cyber health check yet? A complimentary cyber security health check is now included in your FSB membership. To request your free health check please call 03450 727 727.