The start of Cybersecurity Awareness Month means different things to different people and different organizations. For some, it’s mandatory courses and town halls, for others it’s just October, pumpkin spice and Halloween. For the team at White Tuque this month represents an opportunity to connect with those organizations who need help defending themselves the most.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a crucial role in the global economy; as such, they are also prime targets for cyber criminals. Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a great opportunity for SMEs to start to look internally at their technology, risks, and response planning.
For SMEs, a cyberattack or prolonged outage can be devastating, leading to financial losses, damaged reputations, legal ramifications, and even business closure. This month serves as an educational platform, empowering businesses to recognize potential threats like phishing, ransomware, and data breaches.
By fostering a culture of cybersecurity, SMEs can safeguard sensitive information, customer trust, and overall business integrity. In an interconnected world where a digital presence is essential, cyber awareness is not just a necessity but a lifeline for SMEs, ensuring their resilience, growth, and prosperity in the face of evolving cyber threats.
But where do organizations start? How do you know if you are prepared? How to I talk to my service providers? Who needs to be at the table? Do we need a SOC2? It can be a daunting task to understand where to begin, where your organization needs to focus, and what gaps need to be addressed. One of the biggest accomplishments of our team this past year was building an option driven ‘a la carte’ style assessment package we call the Cyber Ready Plan.
For White Tuque, being Cyber Ready means assessing an organization’s critical functions, and how those functions interact with your organizations people, processes, and technology, then ‘shutting the front door’ to bad guys and cyberattacks. Once the immediate risk has been identified and addressed, work with organizations on a plan to ensure cyber resilience and technology risk are always a part of the road map.
What’s better? White Tuque is an approved Canada Digital Adoption Plan (CDAP) Digital Advisors meaning that, if you are located within Canada, our Cyber Ready plan is covered under the Canada Digital Adoption Plan for eligible organizations. This covers 90% of the costs and pre-approves your business for up to $100,000 in loans at 0% interest to help fund long term technology and security improvements.
What’s more, White Tuque was recently onboarded as digital advisors and vendors for the Ontario Centre for Collaboration’s (OCI) Digitization Competence Centre (DCC), allowing Ontario-based organizations who work with us to tap into more funding and grants.
White Tuque is leveraging some unique programs to help defend businesses of all sizes across North America. Why? Because they need the help, desperately. Attacks and the number of SMEs regularly impacted is rising. There is a cyber war ongoing, and we are losing. It is as simple as that. We hope to inform and explore SMEs through some topics this October, but our ultimate goal is to connect and help those organizations who need it most. For those reading this, if your organization (or one you know) could benefit from cyber experts in its corner helping guide them on their cybersecurity journey – we want to help you, because we can.
Want to learn more? We should talk. Visit https://whitetuque.com/help
Robert D. Stewart
Founder & CEO
