Government-Level Cybersecurity Frameworks Your Small Business Can Use
In this day and age, information—intellectual property, employee and client information (PII), financial records—is gold, and unscrupulous individuals will do anything to get their hands on it. Even cybersecurity for small businesses has become a top priority. Luckily, there are high-level government-level cybersecurity frameworks that even SMBs can implement to protect themselves, and you don’t need a federal contract to put them to work.
What Cybersecurity Framework Does the Government Use?
The government is well aware of the damage that cybercrime causes. To protect its sensitive data from breaches, whether intentional or otherwise, the government issued a series of guidelines to be followed by its offices and the businesses that work with them.
These are the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS), which focuses on data procurement; the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), which is mainly for the Department of Defense (DoD); and the Cybersecurity Framework from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Together, these standards form the backbone of government-level cybersecurity in the United States.
However, it’s not only government contractors who benefit from the high-level security that compliance brings. Your small to medium-sized business (SMB) can also reap the benefits of government-level cybersecurity solutions, starting with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.
Why Small and Medium Businesses Need Government-Level Cybersecurity
You might not believe that cybercriminals are targeting your SMB, but the statistics show otherwise. In 2019, 43% of cyberattacks were focused on small and medium enterprises.
With the COVID pandemic driving people to work from home, cybercrime increased 400% a month into the pandemic. Cybercrime is a reality for small and medium businesses, and the damage it causes is real, amounting to millions of dollars each year. That’s precisely why adopting government-level cybersecurity standards is no longer a luxury reserved for large enterprises—it’s a practical defense for businesses of every size.
The NIST Cybersecurity Framework and SMBs
To create an organized cybersecurity system, NIST met with industry leaders in 2013, and a year later, it presented the cybersecurity framework to the public. This government-level cybersecurity framework includes five steps:
- Identify the data and systems that need protection, such as consumer, patient, and other sensitive information.
- Protect the data using hardware and software.
- Detect breaches using tools and policies before they happen.
- Respond to threats by using tools to mitigate and control data breaches.
- Recover systems and assets through backups, parallel devices, the cloud, or other resiliency tools when a data breach occurs.
According to Gartner, the security framework that NIST outlines is so effective that in 2021, 50% of American businesses had adopted it to protect themselves. Your SMB can also benefit from using the NIST framework, gaining government-level cybersecurity protection that scales to your needs and budget.
How ThrottleNet Brings Government-Level Cybersecurity to Your Business
Even if your SMB doesn’t have direct dealings with the government, it can still benefit from the NIST framework, especially for data protection and recovery. You don’t have to navigate these standards alone, and you don’t have to implement every requirement at once.
ThrottleNet’s managed cybersecurity for small businesses helps implement the aspects of NIST that apply to your SMB, providing you with a comprehensive data protection plan that works well with your organization’s specific needs. We translate complex government-level cybersecurity requirements into a practical, customized roadmap so you get enterprise-grade protection without the enterprise-sized headache.
Remember, prevention is always better than the cure. Our Managed Network + Cybersecurity plan is uniquely designed to prevent even the most sophisticated threats while optimizing your networks. Investing in government-level cybersecurity now is far less costly than recovering from a breach later. Get a free dark web scan today to see where your vulnerabilities lie and improve your business’s security.
