Reported data breaches seem to be happening as often as a traffic jam on the beltway. Unless you have been living under a rock, you have heard about the slew of breaches that have compromised large enterprises and their customers’ data. Household names like Target, Home Depot, P.F. Chang’s and countless others, have come under attack.  You have most likely been a victim yourself, perhaps discovering this disturbing fact after opening a piece of mail with a new credit or debit card, informing you that, “Sorry, Mr. Customer, but we’ve been hacked!”

Cyber security is serious business. So serious, in fact, that the Department of Homeland Security is declaring October National Cyber Security Awareness Month.

If large retail chains with near-bottomless coffers are at risk, imagine how the small business is faring in today’s rough-and-tumble world of dark Internet forces.

Here are the small business network security facts:

• 60% of small businesses that experience a data breach are out of business within 6 months
• IBM says there were 1.5 Million attacks alone in 2013, and 81% of them happened to small businesses.
• Visa reports that 90% of the payment data breaches reported come from small businesses

So what can the small business do to protect themselves? There are affordable and easy to install and manage options for growing businesses. The move to the cloud and the advent of Security-as-a-Service (SECaaS) offerings from companies such as My Digital Shield allow small businesses to say goodbye to client-based anti-virus software and simply stop threats at the threshold of entry. With a simple monthly subscription beginning at approximately $69 per month, small businesses can rest assured customer, employee, patient and other data is protected.

If you’re looking to find out more about the small business security landscape, and how to protect yourself or your clients, tune in to “Stop the Madness of the SMB IT Security Arms Race,” with speakers from Intronis, Inc. a provider of world-class backup and data protection solutions for the IT channel, and My Digital Shield, a leading provider of Security-as-a-Service (SECaaS) for growing and small businesses, on October 14, 2014 at 2:00pm. Sign up here: http://campaign.intronis.com/20141014-WBR-MyDigitalShield-Security-Signup.html