What is the Cost of Cybersecurity for South Florida Businesses?

The Cost of Cybersecurity For South Florida Businesses

With the increasing numbers of successful cyberattacks in the USA, cybersecurity is no longer a question of whether you need it but when you will implement it. Businesses have a formidable task of improving resiliency.

One question that brings everything into perspective:

How much does cybersecurity cost businesses in South Florida?

There isn’t one correct answer because every business’ cybersecurity needs vary. However, to come up with estimated costs, let’s first check the expenses involved in protecting businesses’ data and technology.

What Costs Are Involved In Cybersecurity?

The people, processes, and technology — all determine your cybersecurity expense. A business might need cyber security tools such as:

• Enterprise-grade firewalls
• Intrusion detection and prevention system (IDPS)
• Email protection
• Endpoint detection and response software
• Security information and event management
• Web application firewall
• Multi-factor authentication technology

The cybersecurity tools will demand several services to keep your company’s data secure. The services might include:

• Continuous analysis of employee and client behavior on the network
• Detection of advanced attacks in real-time
• Monitoring of logs and activities on company systems to identify a breach before it happens
• Penetration testing to identify any vulnerability in your cyber ecosystem
• File server security
• Cybersecurity training and awareness

How much you’ll spend on cyber security depends on what tools and services you need. Your business might need to focus on assessment, protection, or remediation.

While it’s difficult to pin down specific figures a business spends on cybersecurity, you can derive approximate cybersecurity expenses in South Florida.

What is the Average Cost of Cybersecurity for South Florida Businesses?

What defines the amount a business spends on cybersecurity hugely depends on cybersecurity products and services the business demands.

However, the Deloitte study says that an average South Florida business spends between 6% and 14% of its IT budget on cybersecurity. In other words, you’re likely to spend 10% of your IT budget on cybersecurity, regardless of the industry you’re serving.

What’s more, the Deloitte report states that most businesses spend 3.2% of their total revenue on IT costs, regardless of the company size or the industry it serves. From the data, we can derive more accurate figures, such as:

• Small business annual revenue is less than $5,000,000
• Mid-size business annual revenue ranges between $5,000,000 – 20,000,0000
• Large business annual revenue ranges between 20,000,000 – 50,000,000

Considering that an average business spends 3.2% of their revenue on IT, and 10% of the IT expense on cybersecurity, you can expect to spend:

• $16,000 or less on cybersecurity when running a small business
• Between $16,000 and $64,000 on cybersecurity when running a mid-size business
• Between $64,000 and $160,000 on cybersecurity when running a large business

While the cost might be far from small, you can’t afford to risk a cyberattack because it can cost millions of dollars to mitigate. Even worse, a recent study shows that 60% of small businesses close within six months of a successful attack.

What Factors Affect the Cost of Cyber Security?

Cybersecurity solutions vary from one business to another in all industries.  Cybersecurity cost factors include:

1. The Size of the Business  

Large businesses pay more for cybersecurity solutions. The more employees and devices you have to secure, the higher the chances of attack. More employees higher the chances of email compromises or phishing attacks. As a result,  large enterprises spend more on cybersecurity than small businesses.

However, Deloitte reports that a typical business spends 10% of its IT budget on cybersecurity regardless of the size.

For instance, if a large business spends a total of $640,000 annually on its IT solutions, it’ll approximately spend $64,000 on cybersecurity. On the flip side, if a small business spends $160,000 on IT, $16,000 will go to cyber security.

2. Type of Cyber Security Solution 

There are different ways a business can acquire cybersecurity solutions. Depending on the unique cybersecurity need, a business can:

• Hire a full-time internal cybersecurity team
• Get a specialized contractor to offer cyber security services
• Outsource to an IT company

Your best shot could be to get managed cybersecurity security. Managed services ensure your business is protected 24/7/365 without compromising any service you need. More importantly, you’ll enjoy the flexibility that comes with managed solutions.

Managed cybersecurity ensures coverage of all new threats you might miss with off-the-shelf products. A managed cybersecurity can cost as low as $1500 per month for small businesses in South Florida.

3. Training Your Team on Cyber Security 

You can have the most advanced cybersecurity protection tools, but they are useless if they are not used properly, Training is very important to update employees with new attacks.

Training employees can help in:

• Detecting suspicious activity
• Reinforcing confidentially even when working remotely
• Examining individual cases of cybersecurity breaches

Training employees will cost your business 10 to 60 dollars per employee per year. The amount is insignificant compared to the cost of a ransomware attack, ranging from $170,000 to $1 million.

Why is Cybersecurity Important for Your Business?

Cybersecurity is vital to every business. It offers protection to various types of data. Here are some of the data that should be confidential.

• Personally identifiable information
• Protected health information
• Intellectual property
• Financial data

Without proper cybersecurity measures put into place, your business is at risk of being attacked. Attackers don’t only target big companies but also small businesses that have weak security systems. Your customers depend on you for the security of their data. If anything happens and they are exposed, your reputation is destroyed forever.

Florida has heavy penalties for any organization that fails to notify its victims of a data breach.

Let’s see what penalties you might incur from hiding the information.

• $1000 every day for 30 days
• $50000 for every 30 days up to 180 days
• $500,000 for every breach past 180 days

The Florida information protection act requires every business to have strong cyber security measures. It insists that users’ information should be encrypted to prevent the data from being used for cyber attacks.

LAN Infotech Will Determine The Exact Amount Your Business Will Spend on Cybersecurity in South Florida

Our cybersecurity experts will help you pin down the exact amount you’ll spend on securing your business. While the cost estimations create an excellent rough picture of what you’ll spend, we can help you draft the right budget for you by:

• Examining your business IT infrastructure and calculating the cost of the best cybersecurity solutions
• Offering prices for the best hardware and software solutions to protect your business from attacks
• Budgeting for cybersecurity technicians to handle cybersecurity technology
• Providing you with the final budget for the entire cybersecurity system

Contact us today to discuss further securing your business.

Michael Goldstein

LAN Infotech is a Microsoft Cloud Services Provider, IT Managed Support company and a leader in helping law firms, nonprofits and medical organizations deploy cloud solutions, manage computer networks, keep data protected and top technology management company. Businesses like yours need technology support to run highly-effective organizations.