Introduction
“We’re Too Small to Worry About Security…”
Focus is the key to startup success. With limited resources, a short runway, and formidable competition, entrepreneurial teams must drive relentlessly to engineer compelling customer experiences. Startup cultures dismiss other concerns as corporate bureaucracy, be they dress codes, 401K plans, corner offices, or GAAP accounting. So naturally, startups have typically deferred investments in cyber security as a corporate indulgence that can wait. After all, who would bother attacking a startup anyway?
Even just a couple of years ago, it may not have seemed unreasonable for most company founders to completely ignore cybersecurity threats. But cyberspace has changed a lot since then, in ways that touch and threaten every online business, big or small. Startups now use the same networks and cloud infrastructure that mature companies do, and can quickly aggregate large, juicy caches of their users’ personal data and payment credentials. As malware infestations crawl the web, scaling up in scope to scour through the “long tail” of targets, they do not discriminate between the Fortune 50 and the TechCrunch 50.
