If you claim to be a business owner and have never heard the phrase cyber security, what on Earth have you been up lately? In addition to being a regularly featured topic on this website, cyber security has become a necessity for any company that doesn’t want to lose thousands of dollars in revenue to a hacker with nothing more than a few skills and a WiFi connection.  However, while most cyber attacks come from external sources, one study has recently discovered that your biggest threat could be one of your employees.

According to IBM Security research, 60 percent of cyber attacks are committed by people inside the hacked organization, hopefully demonstrating to the world that hackers are not an external problem that will go away on their own. They’re a serious problem that needs to be addressed at every level.

While it would be easy to dismiss these statistics as accidental, that is tragically not the case.  To make matters significantly worse, the data found that only 25 percent of those attacks were accidental while 75 percent of them were intentional with malicious intent. Um…. what?!

If this study doesn’t make you want to spend millions and millions of dollars on cybersecurity, I don’t know what will. However, as is the case with most things, quality is more important than quantity, which is why you need to take calculated steps to make sure your company is safe from all threats, foreign and domestic.

“Companies must take proper precautions when it comes to detecting and preventing potential inside threats,” said Timothy Crosby, senior security consultant at Spohn Security Solutions, who partnered with IBM for the study, in a press release. “Cyber security must include proper training so that mistakes are not made that leave a company’s information vulnerable to a hack. Extensive background checks, effective in‑house training, and constant vigilance are all needed to protect a company’s assets.”

I’ve written these exact words on more one occasion, but it bears repeating: start caring about cyber security. Hackers are targeting small businesses because of their lack of resources, which makes a hack that much more devastating. For the love of whatever entrepreneurial god you hold dear, address vulnerabilities now, before it’s too late.

Read more about the importance of cyber security on TechCo