Six­ty per cent of small com­pa­nies go out of busi­ness with­in six months of falling vic­tim to a da­ta breach or cy­ber at­tack, in­ter­na­tion­al cy­ber ex­pert Danyet­ta Flem­ing Ma­g­a­na has warned.

As such Ma­g­a­na said her com­pa­ny Covenant Se­cu­ri­ty So­lu­tions is hop­ing to give small busi­ness­es a fight­ing chance.

Covenant Se­cu­ri­ty So­lu­tions has in­tro­duced an ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence-pow­ered risk man­age­ment sys­tem named the Cy­ber Risk Por­tal that “makes op­ti­mis­ing cy­ber readi­ness and tak­ing con­trol of third-par­ty risk sim­ple and cost-ef­fec­tive.”

“The whole goal is to be able to pro­vide for com­pa­nies, whether they are large or small, the ca­pac­i­ty to man­age their cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty for them­selves and make all of us safer,” Ma­g­a­na said.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the is­sue of cost usu­al­ly aris­es and makes this dif­fi­cult she said.

“It is an­oth­er cost cen­tre for com­pa­nies. It is some­thing else to spend mon­ey on and the ques­tion is it re­al­ly go­ing to hap­pen to me,” she said.

“The re­al is­sue about it is it is go­ing to hap­pen to you and not on­ly can it hap­pen to you but you are more like­ly to go out of busi­ness per­ma­nent­ly as a re­sult of it hap­pen­ing to you,” Ma­g­a­na said.

“Around 60 per cent of small busi­ness­es get cy­ber at­tacked and they ba­si­cal­ly go out of busi­ness and you nev­er hear from them again so it is a risk and I think a lot of small, and medi­um-sized com­pa­nies they are say­ing that they do not want to spend a lot of mon­ey so that is why we came in with the risk por­tal,” she said.

Ma­g­a­na said Covenant Se­cu­ri­ty So­lu­tions has kept the cost of its por­tal af­ford­able.

“If you are run­ning a small busi­ness you don’t want to spend half of your rev­enue, you have peo­ple to pay, you have a liveli­hood to take care of, so you don’t want your rev­enue to go to try­ing to pro­tect in­for­ma­tion for an event that may hap­pen,” she said.

“But the re­al­i­ty is that it will most like­ly hap­pen or is al­ready hap­pen­ing and you don’t want to be in a sit­u­a­tion where it es­ca­lates to a point where that busi­ness that you put all of that blood, sweat and tears in is now gone as a re­sult of some­one steal­ing your in­for­ma­tion and it is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant,” Ma­g­a­na said.

Ma­g­a­na said once a com­pa­ny is deal­ing with on­line sales they need to en­sure that they are com­pli­ant with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

“There are fines as­so­ci­at­ed with da­ta loss. Sell­ing on­line and hav­ing in­ter­na­tion­al cus­tomers you have to abide by the rules and laws in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. So if you lose a cus­tomer’s da­ta they will come and say this is fine. It is nev­er a good sce­nario,” she said.

Ma­g­a­na said with both the fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty and fu­ture of your busi­ness on the line, or­gan­i­sa­tions of all sizes must have mea­sures in place to mon­i­tor sus­pi­cious net­work ac­tiv­i­ty.

On Mon­day Covenant Se­cu­ri­ty So­lu­tions will be launch­ing the “We are One: Al­ways Con­nect­ed” cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty cam­paign.

Ma­g­a­na said the cam­paign aims to ed­u­cate and em­pow­er the com­mu­ni­ty to be cy­ber re­silient and present a holis­tic in­te­grat­ed so­lu­tion for meet­ing cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty threats as a man­aged ser­vice.

From the cam­paign, peo­ple can ex­pect ed­u­ca­tion­al ses­sions host­ed live on Linkedin, week­ly cy­ber tips on var­i­ous so­cial me­dia plat­forms, and in­struc­tion­al videos.

The in­tro­duc­tion of the Cy­ber Risk Por­tal, a strate­gic tool used to mit­i­gate threats, will briefly be dis­cussed at the vir­tu­al launch as the com­pa­ny seeks to es­tab­lish its rel­e­vance with­in the Caribbean and the wider re­gion­al con­text.

Gov­ern­ment Agen­cies, Le­gal, NGO’s, Health­care, SMB’s, C-Suite Ex­ec­u­tives, as well as, per­sons who share re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in the ar­eas of tech­nol­o­gy, will ben­e­fit from the op­por­tu­ni­ty of a life­time to learn from the knowl­edge, ex­pe­ri­ence, and strate­gies of in­dus­try ex­perts in the cam­paign, she said.

Ma­g­a­na is a Cer­ti­fied In­for­ma­tion Sys­tems Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al (CIS­SP) and Fel­low with the In­sti­tute of Strate­gic Risk Man­age­ment (IS­RM).

She found­ed Covenant Se­cu­ri­ty So­lu­tions in 2003.

Ma­g­a­na said her goal is to push the en­ve­lope re­gard­ing how we think about our in­for­ma­tion and find new and in­no­v­a­tive ways to se­cure our dig­i­tal way of life.

In 2001, Ma­g­a­na re­ceived the Black En­gi­neer of the Year Award for the “Most Promis­ing En­gi­neer in Gov­ern­ment.”

She is an ad­vi­so­ry board mem­ber for the TINYg—Glob­al Ter­ror­ism In­for­ma­tion Net­work and Armed Forces Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Elec­tron­ics As­so­ci­a­tion (AFCEA), In­ter­na­tion­al Tech­nol­o­gy Com­mit­tee.

Her com­pa­ny was recog­nised by Di­ver­si­ty Busi­ness for 2014, 2012, and 2011 as one of the “Top 500 African Amer­i­can Owned Busi­ness in the US”

In ad­di­tion, her com­pa­ny was ho­n­oured in the Inc. 5000, as one of Amer­i­ca’s Fastest-Grow­ing Com­pa­nies for 2014.

She grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Ur­bana Cham­paign with a BS in En­gi­neer­ing.

“Be­cause we lock down ma­chines, we can se­cure them. We al­ways have to make sure that peo­ple un­der­stand their in­ter­ac­tion and what it means when you put in­for­ma­tion in­side of this dig­i­tal world,” she said.

Ma­g­a­na said the best de­fence is vig­i­lance.

“I think there are a lot of as­sump­tions that the gov­ern­ment is go­ing to take care of it, or my com­pa­ny is go­ing to take care of it or my in­ter­net provider is go­ing to take care of it,” she said.

“In re­al­i­ty, it is re­al­ly about the types of de­ci­sions you make on­line. We call that cy­ber hy­giene,” she said.

Ma­g­a­na said just like you brush your teeth every day there are some very clear cut prac­tices that you have to in­clude in your dai­ly lifestyle to pro­tect your­self on­line.

“One is not as­sum­ing that every­thing that comes in your email is le­git­i­mate, look­ing for cer­tain things to stop phish­ing at­tacks. Be care­ful, of the things you share on so­cial me­dia,” she said.

She said in­di­vid­ual re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is key.

Ma­g­a­na said dur­ing the cam­paign, par­tic­i­pants can look for­ward to learn­ing about how to be proac­tive against cy­ber threats; hack­ers, ran­somware or phish­ing at­tacks; how to train per­sons and de­vel­op strate­gies to man­age cy­ber threats be­yond an IT fo­cus; how to utilised the cy­ber risk por­tal to iden­ti­fy im­por­tant se­cu­ri­ty risks to an or­gan­i­sa­tion and an or­gan­i­sa­tion’s 0sup­ply chain, in­clud­ing com­pli­ance with the ISO 27001 stan­dard.

The re­cent war cri­sis in Ukraine has now po­si­tioned the world in a vul­ner­a­ble state, that is high­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to cy­ber-at­tacks, which can dis­suade busi­ness op­er­a­tions, in­vest­ments and desta­bilise a coun­try’s econ­o­my.

As such, the cam­paign is ex­pect­ed to sen­si­tise stake­hold­ers and end users on the im­por­tance of build­ing a cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty cul­ture so every­one is pre­pared to block at­tack­ers from com­pro­mis­ing their or­gan­i­sa­tion.