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Kelly Ryan
EVP Business Development, guardDog.ai

 

 

Learn to Protect Your Cannabis Company from CyberSecurity Threats

In the U.S., state-legal cannabis companies are creating an economic boon for marijuana-related entrepreneurs. An increasing number of people who welcome the benefits of cannabis for pain relief, mental health and a myriad of other disorders can now obtain these remedies freely in a growing number of U.S. locations.

American marijuana businesses are benefitting the U.S. economy as well. Some reports estimate that cannabis could pump as much as $130B into the U.S. economy by 2024.

But there are also some significant challenges that today’s emerging cannabis companies face.

For starters, most legal cannabis companies are newly established small-to-mid size enterprises. Among other things, this means that many have not yet had the time to ruggedize their systems against cybersecurity attacks. Marijuana retailers and their customers are at risk as well, as they hold credit card and other personally identifiable information, making these businesses and their customers a rich target for cybersecurity attacks.

Here’s a shocking statistic: in 2021, 50 percent of small and mid-sized businesses reported suffering at least one cybersecurity attack. The consequences are dire for the companies that get hit – according to the National Cybersecurity Alliance, 6 out of 10 small businesses that get hit will be out of business within 6 months.

The kinds of attacks they get are the primary things we know about –

Phishing – the email messages that pretend to be a trusted individual or entity that tricks the recipient into revealing information or unknowingly downloading malware.

Public Wi-Fi, which many cannabis company staffers use to conduct their business, is also a frequent source of cybersecurity attacks as bad actors can set up rogue Wi-Fi networks to harvest business and personal data.

Ransomware attacks are a big issue in which hackers who successfully infiltrate a network may lock and encrypt the company’s data until a ransom is paid. With no means of conducting their business, far too many victims of these attacks may simply comply. In a cannabis business the demand for ransom is even more severe when the threat includes making the business and its information public in a way that is problematic due to federal cannabis business restrictions.

Internet of Things (IoT) is a particular threat in that it can give any device within range the potential of connecting to the business operations or indoor growing facility and causing irreparable harm.

But as with other business sectors, we have a way to alleviate cybersecurity threats to cannabis businesses through the use of automated and cloud-based threat prevention technologies like guardDog.ai.

With guardDog’s overlay technology, your business can pay a small monthly or annual subscription cost to gain automated and proactive protection for all of the areas in your network traditional device management and VPN solutions will miss. Your network can’t protect against what it can’t see – and these are the areas the hackers will attempt to employ.

guardDog’s autonomous AI protection can map suspicious behaviors against a global database of known threats and emerging trends to stop attempted exploits on your accounts and information before they can start.

Also important is the opportunity for service providers or integrators that support cannabis business customers. By offering guardDog protection within their own internet and IT offerings, integrators can protect their customers and their own reputations by vastly improving the protection that comes with the IT and internet service they provide. Integrators can use guardDog.ai to significantly reduce the time and costs they (and their customers) would otherwise need to spend in remediation. And they also pick up an additional source of residual revenue for your organization as well.

Yet again, when you Follow the Money on the decision to protect your network environment with guardDog.ai, everyone wins.

About guardDog.ai

guardDog.ai provides a software service that simplifies cybersecurity management with AI-powered autonomous detection and response technology. The solution is designed to make advanced cybersecurity accessible for small, mid-market, and distributed organizations without complexity. It can be easily deployed on hardware, in virtualized environments, embedded systems, and more, offering automatic protection at the network level. Hidden threats to networks and devices are made visible and instantly terminated with intelligent countermeasures, and detected vulnerabilities are exposed. Management of the service, incident and severity level reporting, and access to additional advanced features are accessed through a cloud-based security operations dashboard. For more information, please email dealers@guardDog.ai or visit the guardDog.ai dealer page here.

Contacts

Sales Contact:
sales@guarddog.ai
833-248-2733