Cybersecurity is an area that’s been ignored for far too long. Many companies have viewed investing in cybersecurity as an unnecessary expense. “We can’t make money from it, it just takes money from us. What’s the point in that?” is a refrain you would hear from many managers and executives, especially at smaller companies with limited resources.
But we’re in 2021, and cybersecurity breaches are too numerous to even list so I won’t try. What I do know is that for the companies on the list of the biggest data breaches, or those who trend on Twitter for it, the billions they lose may not even be the worst part. Their name is mocked on social media and tarnished by traditional media outlets.
For the companies unlucky enough to be involved in some of these rankings, like the most expensive data breaches, I can assure you they could’ve parted with whatever it would’ve cost to adequately protect themselves from cyberattacks. I think everyone can spare a few dollars, but very few can spare losing a few billion.
Companies are starting to come around more and more to the idea that it’s not if you’ll be the victim of a cyberattack, but when. The only assurance is that you will be the victim of a cybersecurity attack if you don’t take the necessary steps to prevent them.
As more companies come to this realization, cybersecurity experts are all the rage. It is a highly-specialized and niche field that few truly understand, with consultants essentially getting to name their price.
And with any rapidly-growing field, comes companies with new and unique product offerings. Take CHEQ for example. CHEQ is a relatively new startup that works with advertisers to ensure that all of the clicks on an ad campaign are by a human (not a robot). How can any company accurately gauge the effectiveness of a campaign if half of the clicks are by bots? CHEQ seeks to remedy that with solutions for display and video advertisers, as well as PPC or “click fraud” prevention for paid search and social campaigns.
There’s no telling what the future holds in many areas, but cybersecurity is likely to continue to be a hot-button issue worthy of companies’ time and resources to combat. Hopefully as time goes on, having a worthwhile cybersecurity approach and employing the use of a company’s solutions like CHEQ will not be seen as the exception but rather the rule; a necessity for survival in a rapidly-changing ecosystem.