For some reason, businesses still need convincing about cybersecurity.

You’d think that with the veritable stream of breaches occurring, all organizations out there would realize the importance of robust cybersecurity and act accordingly. But that’s not the case unfortunately. All too frequently, companies are simply choosing to ignore the pressing issue of network security in favor of a tactic that requires much less work – avoidance. Here’s the thing, though: That always backfires.

One big reason that enterprises dodge implementing robust cybersecurity strategies is because they don’t grasp the importance and urgency of keeping the corporate virtual system protected. In order to facilitate the realization process, we’ve decided to count down the top four reasons to prioritize enterprise security:

    1. Cyberattacks hit all industries 

There’s no such thing as a breach-proof industry. Just because your business isn’t a bank or a major corporate player doesn’t mean it’ll escape the long arm of the hacker. This fact was starkly illustrated by the release of the Identity Theft Resource Center’s 2014 Data Breach Report, which found that breaches in 2014 were pretty evenly spread across industries – including government, education, business and banking. In one surprising finding, the sector that was hit by the largest percentage of breaches wasn’t finance-related, but was instead the medical/health care industry, representing 42.5 percent of total breaches during the year. The diverse range of victims targeted by hackers is one key reason to up the ante as far as business security is concerned – no matter what your enterprise is.

    1. More connected devices means more connected hackers

Don’t get us wrong, the growth of business mobility is wonderful. By mobilizing the workforce, enterprises empower their employees to do better work – and enjoy more convenient access at the same time. But as Albuquerque Journal contributor Kevin Robinson-Avila has pointed out, mobile devices in the corporate environment open up a new batch of vulnerabilities. Therefore, it’s imperative that as companies mobilize, they also provide mobile security.

    1. You can’t rely on employees and customers to be secure for you.

Sure, you can instruct your employees on cybersecurity best practices, but your staffers will never – and should never – do the security work that’s required at the business administrative level. If you don’t roll out a business-wide security infrastructure and plan, you can guarantee that employees will expose the network to risks. After all, that’s just the nature of computing.

    1. Your business staying open depends on security.

As one industry white paper reported, six out of 10 small organizations to suffer a breach shut their doors within six months of the attack. So if your company suffers a breach, the odds are more likely than not that it won’t recover. Why would you ever want to take that risk? The solution lies in prioritizing cybersecurity so you don’t ever have to experience the fallout of a cyberattack.

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