SMEs at high risk of cyber threats

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are at greater risk of cyber threats than they realize. Shockingly, only 36% of SMEs prioritize cyber risk, despite the fact that cyber-criminals are using increasingly sophisticated impersonation fraud techniques to exploit their staff.

Impersonation fraud targets the employees of a business, using social engineering to trick them into breaking standard security policies and granting access to sensitive data or funds. In fact, research shows that a staggering 79% of SMEs state that ransomware was released as a result of a social engineering attack. Once a business is compromised, cyber-criminals can carry out further breaches, such as spreading viruses or accessing personal data. It’s crucial for SMEs to understand the severity of cyber threats and take action to protect their businesses.

The client’s challenge

MediaWeb Group is an integrated marketing and digital storytelling agency that provides services to IronTree, a Sendmarc partner. Over the last two years, they’ve developed a comprehensive understanding of IronTree’s suite of solutions. MediaWeb Group has both online and offline backups and exercises several cybersecurity measures and solutions. However, email impersonation was something they hadn’t considered as a pressing issue simply because they felt it was unlikely given their size – why would anyone impersonate a boutique marketing agency?

MediaWeb explains “One of the challenges that we repeatedly share with our customers is that “you never think it will happen to you.” In MediaWeb’s case, this was entirely true. “While we have a number of cybersecurity and backup measures in place, and despite the fact that within your daily email inbox, you see email impersonation efforts, you never feel that you are going to get spoofed right under your nose,”

“We helped to market IronTree’s 2022 national roadshow and attended the events to shoot case study videos to tell their story. When attending a session where Sendmarc explained the benefits and technical prowess of their email impersonation protection software, we were impressed but didn’t act,” they added.

“That was until the cyber criminals came knocking and were impersonating our email. The first thing we did was call IronTree as their SecureIT suite offers, amongst others, Sendmarc. With intelligent technology, as well as simple management reports to entirely prevent email impersonation (or spoofing attacks), the same offering is available to organizations of all sizes. The response from IronTree and Sendmarc was literally immediate. We often share this about them, this time we saw it first-hand.” What happened next?

“IronTree and Sendmarc immediately set up a Teams call, clearly explained how the solution works and started the onboarding process. They took us through the stages we would work through, how we were going to be protected, and the timeline. They explained the costs from initiation to execution, the security of our accounts, and successfully moved us to a safe and secure position being a five out of five Sendmarc score (https://irontree.sendmarc.com). Throughout this process, we had constant communication from the team at IronTree and Sendmarc, until we were fully protected.”