Welcome

Are You Prepared?

We’ve all heard the saying, “hindsight is 20-20”. While no one could have predicted the curveball that COVID has thrown at us this year, there is no doubt that if you could go back in time there would be a few things you would do differently. You could prepare your workforce to work remotely, put in procedures and equipment to slow the spread of infectious diseases, buy stock in Netflix…Playing the “what if” game doesn’t have to be a waste of time. There are things that we can learn from this experience and, in some cases, very predictable problems in our future that we can start preparing for now.

October is cybersecurity month. You don’t need hindsight to see that cybersecurity is a real threat to every operation. Experts say that in 2021 a business will fall victim to a cybersecurity attack every eleven seconds. EVERY ELEVEN SECONDS! Many businesses in our region, especially the smaller businesses, are unprepared to defend against a cyber-attack. Others would have a hard time recovering from an innocent mis-stroke of the delete key. WVUIE is here to help you prepare to defend your cyber assets.

One way that we can help is through our partnership with the WV Small Business Development Center (SBDC). While we have been a partner with the SBDC for several years, we have recently decided to team up to assist our local small businesses with cybersecurity. The process starts when you take the SBDC’s free online assessment “Small Business Big Threat”.

This basic assessment will give you an idea of just how vulnerable your organization is to a cyber-attack. If the assessment shows that you need to take further measures to be secure, the WVUIE will assist in creating a cyber-based assessment of your assets. Once you’ve completed these two steps, you will be prepared to talk with a 3rd party cybersecurity consultant (we can recommend a few if you would like). Having a clear understanding of what you need and what you have, will save a great deal of time and money when you start working with a cybersecurity expert.

If you’re interested in learning more about cybersecurity, the SBDC, Advantage Technology, and the WVUIE are producing a series of free webinars in October. To get more information and register for the webinars, visit the SBDC’s Training Events calendar.

We can’t go back in time to prepare for the present, but we can take what we’ve learned and prepare for the future. Cybersecurity is only one of the many potential threats to our manufacturing businesses. Do you want help in identifying and protecting your business from potential threats? Give me a call and let’s see how the WVUIE can help.