Few executives actually enjoy the annual budgeting process. And yet, it is a necessary evil if you want to ensure the funds you need to support new initiatives, expansion, additional headcount, marketing, and similar endeavors are properly allocated.
Aside from the money doled out to the various departments, your CFO also has to think about the company’s cash reserves. Cash reserves are the funds put aside for emergency expenses. If you’re lucky, those cash reserves will continue to grow, year after year. That is, of course, unless something big or unexpected comes along.
Imagine going along with the day-to-day operations of your business and then finding out you have been swindled. Marylanders are familiar with the payroll company AccuPay, whose owners stole millions from the trusting clients who counted on them to hold payroll tax dollars in trust before remitting payments to the IRS and State. Sadly, AccuPay owners collected the funds but never made the payments. In the end, this payroll tax fraud scheme left business owners on the hook to cover those taxes for a second time, driving many into bankruptcy.
And what about the pandemic? If there is one thing COVID-19 showed us it’s that business can change in the blink of an eye. Some companies were shut down completely for months. Others were forced to reinvent their business overnight, just to stay afloat. Many had to immediately and unexpectantly invest in additional resources so that employees could work remotely or more safely in the office. For many, the pandemic’s toll was too much to bear. By September of 2020, a whopping 97,966 businesses had closed their doors permanently.1
While many disasters are impossible to see coming, an email phishing attack is not.
There are some disaster prevention measures we take very seriously and certainly budget for. Can you imagine not having fire alarms in your building? Would you personally go without health benefits just because you were feeling well? Of course not. The same reasoning should apply to the potential phishing threats that put every business at risk.
If Ben Franklin were alive today, we’d like to think he’d be an INKY client. Why? Franklin knew that preventing something from happening is easier than trying to resolve the problem later. For instance, Business Email Compromise (BEC) is just one type of phishing threat and yet it cost businesses more a $1.8 billion in 2020. That’s an average of $96,372.66 an instance.2 Could your budget handle that kind of hit? Even if it could, the “pound of cure” is the smarter way to go.
INKY takes the responsibility of recognizing phishing scams away from employees and IT departments. INKY is an award-winning cloud-based email security software solution that recognizes phishing emails that the human eye could never see. Driven by computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, INKY blocks malicious emails, many of which your secure email gateways (SEGs) and virus protection software programs can’t detect. In many ways, a subtle form of training is baked into every email protected by INKY’s anti-phishing capabilities. It comes in the form of a simple banner that alerts readers of dangerous and suspicious emails.
Ben Franklin also said, “A penny saved is a penny earned.” Be sure to add a line item to your budget this year for INKY. It’s the smartest way to keep a phishing attack from disrupting everything else your budget supports.
If you’d like to learn more about the phishing threats facing your company and how best to protect them, a great first step is to schedule a demonstration.
Request an INKY demonstration today.
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INKY™ is the most effective hero in the war against phishing. An award-winning cloud-based email security solution, INKY™ prevents the most complex phishing threats from disrupting or even immobilizing your company’s day-to-day business operations. Using computer vision, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, INKY™ is the smartest investment you can make in the security of your organization. INKY™ is a proud winner of the SINET 16 Innovation Award and was a finalist in the RSAC Innovation Sandbox Competition. Learn more about INKY™ or request an online demonstration today.
1Source: https://www.yelpeconomicaverage.com/business-closures-update-sep-2020.html
2Source: https://www.ic3.gov/Media/PDF/AnnualReport/2020_IC3Report.pdf