Imagine this: A mid-sized manufacturer in Northeast Ohio loses access to their production schedules for 16 days. Not because of equipment failure or a power outage. Ransomware has encrypted everything, including their backup systems. Recovery costs and lost production total $240,000. They are still dealing with the aftermath.
This is not a disaster movie scenario. It is the type of problem we encounter in ransomware attacks targeting businesses like yours. According to the FBI’s 2024 Internet Crime Report, businesses reported more than $16.6 billion in losses from cybercrime last year alone, a 33 percent increase from 2023.
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, making it the perfect time to assess whether your organization practices good cyber hygiene. Think of cyber hygiene as the routine practices that keep your digital systems secure. Not complicated, enterprise-level security. Just the fundamentals: locking your digital doors, checking that your systems work, and knowing what to do when something goes wrong.
Here is how to assess whether your business has the basics covered.
Six Questions That Reveal Your Cyber Hygiene Reality
- Do you require multi-factor authentication for all user accounts?
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) means requiring two or more forms of verification before someone can access your systems. It might be a password plus a code sent to a phone, or a password plus a fingerprint scan.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reports that using MFA makes you 99 percent less likely to be hacked. Yet many businesses still rely solely on passwords.
What this means for your business: If an employee password is stolen in a phishing attack or compromised in a data breach at a completely different company, attackers can walk right into your accounting system, your customer database, and your email. MFA adds another layer of protection to help prevent attackers from gaining access. Even when passwords are compromised, that second authentication factor keeps attackers locked out.
- When did you last update your software and systems?
When IT vendors release updates, they are often patching known security vulnerabilities. Once those patches become public, cybercriminals reverse-engineer them to figure out how to exploit systems that have not been updated yet. Quite often, attackers discover vulnerabilities before IT vendors. You have a narrow window to patch before attackers start scanning for vulnerable systems.
The 2025 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found a 34 percent increase in attacks exploiting vulnerabilities as an initial entry point. Vulnerability exploitation is now the second most common way attackers break into systems, right behind stolen credentials.
What this means for your business: That accounting software you have been meaning to update? The server running an operating system from eight years ago? That firewall that hasn’t been touched in years? Those are not simple inefficiencies. They are open doors. Attackers use automated tools to scan and look for unpatched systems. When they find one, they strike. The proactive fix costs you a small amount of downtime. The attack could cost you months of recovery.
- Are your employees trained and can they spot a potential security issue?
Phishing was the number one cybercrime reported to the FBI in 2024, with more than 193,000 complaints. The 2024 Verizon report found that 68 percent of data breaches involve a non-malicious human element, meaning someone made a mistake or fell for a social engineering attack.
What this means for your business: Your controller gets an email that looks like it is from your CFO asking for an urgent wire transfer. Your IT manager receives what appears to be a Microsoft security alert. Your receptionist clicks on a link that looks like a UPS delivery notification. These attacks work because they exploit trust and urgency. One click can give attackers access to your entire network, your financial systems, and your customer data. Regular security awareness training turns your employees from your weakest link into your strongest defense. Securing humans is imperative.
- Do you have a documented incident response plan?
An incident response plan (IRP) outlines exactly who does what when a security incident occurs. An IRP focuses on technical containment, investigation, and recovery.
Research shows that 77 percent of organizations do not have an incident response plan. Companies without one pay significantly more in breach-related costs and take much longer to contain a breach than those with a documented plan.
What this means for your business: When your systems are compromised at 2 a.m., you cannot afford to spend three hours figuring out who has authority to shut down servers, who contacts your cyber insurance carrier, or whether you are legally required to notify customers. An IRP means your team has a plan in place and executes a tested protocol. You know who makes decisions. You know what gets priority. You know who communicates what to whom. The difference between scrambling and executing could save your business.
- Are you backing up your data automatically and testing those backups?
Attackers are now looking to compromise backup systems as well. They know that if they can destroy your backups, you may have no choice but to pay their ransom demand.
Even if a business paid ransomware demands, they may not get their data back. You could be out the ransom and still lose data.
What this means for your business: Backing up your data is critical, but backing up is not the same as being able to recover. If your backups are connected to your network, ransomware can encrypt them too. You need to test your backups regularly to confirm they actually work when you need them. Can you restore a file from two weeks ago? Can you rebuild your entire system from scratch? If you cannot answer “yes” with confidence, your backups might be giving you false security.
6. Are you able to automatically detect a cybersecurity issue?
Most cyberattacks do not announce themselves. Attackers work to stay hidden, moving through your systems quietly, stealing data or establishing persistent access for future exploitation. The average time to detect a breach is 194 days, according to IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report. That means attackers could be inside your network for more than six months before you know anything is wrong.
Manual monitoring or periodic security checks cannot catch threats in real time. You need security technology that monitors your network 24/7, looking for unusual activity, unauthorized access attempts, and signs of compromise as they happen.
What this means for your business: Without automated detection tools like Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems (which collect and analyze security data from across your network), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) software (which monitors individual devices for suspicious behavior), or managed detection services, you are flying blind. By the time you notice something is wrong (your bank account is empty, customers are complaining about fraudulent charges, or your systems are locked by ransomware), the damage is already done. Continuous monitoring gives you visibility into what is happening on your network right now. It alerts you when an employee account starts accessing files it should not touch. It flags when someone tries to log in from an unusual location. It detects when malware starts communicating with a command server. Early detection means you can contain an incident before it becomes a catastrophe. The difference between detecting an intrusion in hours versus months could be the difference between a minor security incident and a business-ending breach.
What Your Answers Mean
If you answered “no” or “I’m not sure” to any of these questions, your organization has gaps in its cyber hygiene. The good news? These gaps are fixable.
You don’t need to be a Fortune 500 company with unlimited IT budgets. These six fundamentals give you a big boost in security improvement for a small investment. You need to know where you are most vulnerable and address that first.
Rea can help
Rea has spent more than 20 years working with organizations in healthcare, manufacturing, nonprofits, and professional services. We understand and help solve the technology complexities and challenges you face.
We are not a firm that drops a 50-page technical report on your desk and disappears. Our Rea Information Services division sits down with you to translate technical vulnerabilities into business decisions. We give you a prioritized roadmap based on your actual budget and risk tolerance, not a wish list that assumes unlimited resources.
We tell you: “Fix this first because it protects your most critical operations. This other issue can wait. This is not worth the cost for a business of your size.” That is practical advice from people who understand your business, your industry, and your constraints.
Our comprehensive services include 24/7 monitoring, employee security awareness training, incident response planning, and regular security assessments. But more importantly, we become your partners. If something goes wrong, you have an experienced team who knows your systems and can respond immediately.
Rea’s cybersecurity specialists can give you a prioritized roadmap of your vulnerabilities ranked by business impact and cost to fix. No jargon. No scare tactics. Just clear guidance on where to start.
Contact Rea today to request your risk assessment.
