Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How much should I spend on cyber security?

A: On average, entry level cyber security solutions are around 12% of a companies IT budget. According to recent studies, over half of companies world wide plan to increase their cyber security budgets due to experiences in security incidents. For adequate cyber security, Guardian recommends 17% - 25% of your IT budget be allocated to cyber security.

Q: How often does a business actually experience a cyber incident?

A: It is reported that 68% of all organizations experienced a cyber attack in 2023. 43% of these were small businesses. In our opinion, 68% is not accurate. We believe it is much higher. Many organizations do not report cyber attacks out of fear for loss of reputation and trust. Additionally, most organizations are not adequately equipped with the cyber security they need to defend their businesses. It is estimated on average in 2023 that attackers were in victim systems 11 days before they were discovered.

Q: How much do cyber breaches cost?

A: In 2022, data breaches averaged 9.44M dollars each to identify and remediate. This does not include the loss you experience in the aftermath or the loss from intellectual property and private info stolen. Expense to fix and clean a victimized system often includes legal expenses (i.e. notifying your customers of their breached data by law), the expense to identify and isolate the incident, and the expense to clean it up. There are also often public relations expenses businesses have to invest time and money into. One of the biggest costs (not included in the estimate previously) are the aftermath costs. When a company experiences a cyber attack there is often fallout amongst its client base. If your clients can't trust you to protect their data, why would they trust you with it in the first place? It is always cheaper to protect yourself before hand than to clean up an incident later because you didn't.

Q: Why should I hire a 3rd party to take care of my security?

A: An organization carries the primary responsibility for the success in all parts of their operation. We recommend organizations take control of their IT systems. We recommend organizations be educated on their IT systems. We recommend organizations have an understanding of the activity that transpires on their IT systems. It is not just a "nice" thing to secure your systems, but a moral obligation to your own clients. To do this without relying on external help is out of reach for most organizations. The specialties and experience needed to do this correctly requires highly skilled personel. For the greater majority of businesses, trying to do everything in house is far too expensive and time consuming. That is where we come in. We have industry qualified experts with decades of experience. Guardian can perform security services for a fraction of the cost it would take you to do yourself. For example, the market rate in hiring a full time cyber security analyst is over 100,000$ a year! On top of this, you have hardware and software costs that can grow quickly. When you hire out an organization like ours that specializes in cyber security, most will experience less than half to even less than a quarter vs. if they had tried to do it in house all by themselves. Guardian's business model empowers our clients. We give our clients complete control and visibility into their systems and data while providing protection.