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10 FEDA News & Views S ecurity Expert John Sileo has earned the right to be blatantly honest when it comes to cyber- security blunders from both small and big business. As chronicled in his book Privacy Means Profi t: Prevent Identity Theft & Secure Your Bottom Line, this is the guy who spent two long years putting the pieces back together again after his identity was stolen and used to steal $300,000 from his clients. That breach destroyed his business and, for a time, mangled his life. And then he put pen to paper and spun a life crisis into a thriving speaking business dedi- cated to squashing data theft and fraud. So it's not surprising that when asked for a few parting thoughts that business owners should lodge into their brains, he prefaced them with this: "They're going to read your piece, they're going to understand that this is important and then they're going to get busy with other things. That's how we all work," says Sileo, who himself heads a fi ve-person small business called the Sileo Group. "We're entrepreneurs, we've got our hands in every pie in the business." Which is why he believes the greatest security threat facing business owners is not the rise in ransomware attacks—as issued in a warning by the FBI earlier this year—or the trend toward target- ing small and midsize businesses. Since 2013, reports the agency, more than 7,000 U.S. companies of all sizes have been victims of cyberhacks via phishing email scams. Activity that Sileo believes points to a larger issue—an outright dis- missal of the threat. "In the world of data breach," he says, "you care a whole lot after you've been hacked but you pay very little attention prior to being hacked. Business owners simply do not think it will happen to them, so it's really a problem of attitude. That was true of Target and Sony and it was true of small businesses like mine. I didn't pay attention until it happened and I think that the problem is that own- ers don't see, particularly small business owners, don't see this as a matter of course. This is now busi- ness as usual and if you're not spending roughly 20 percent of your technol- ogy budget on security, you're behind the curve." Take a look at the bar- rage of companies on the other end of a breach and 20 percent seems reasonable. Sites spon- sored by organizations like the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) offer annual tal- lies of breaches that occur as a result of a number of means, internal theft, hack- ing/ skimming/phishing, employee error, physical theft, third-party exposure, etc. ITRC updates its list daily and posts the results every Tuesday. As of August, 584 Why Identity Theft Expert John Sileo Believes Many Business Owners aren't There Yet By Stacy Ward, Managing Editor fedastacy@verizon.net If you know there's a chance your building will be damaged by an act of nature, you go out and buy insurance. Most business owners don't think about allocating a budget or resources for securing their data but the same kind of preventative measures is really a must and requires a shift in thinking. John Sileo, the author of Privacy Means Profit Getting Serious About CyberSecurity