• Small to medium-sized businesses (“SMBs”) face potentially prohibitive costs when it comes to hiring full-time cybersecurity experts 
• Despite the costs concern, the need is growing, as malicious computer experts often turn to SMBs and organizations as easy prey because of the smaller companies’ lack of experience, budget, and infrastructure necessary to ward off computer network invasions
• A San Diego school district recently reported its employees’ personal data was compromised in a cyberattack, and a Los Angeles school district reported it received a ransom demand after its computer files were seized in September and then published on the dark web
• SideChannel Inc. is helping SMBs to bridge the cybersecurity cost divide by offering virtual chief information security officers (“vCISOs”) as a contracted service that is more affordable than an in-house employee

When the San Diego Unified School District acknowledged recently that the personal information of many current and former employees was taken by unknown actors in a cybersecurity incident, it established that potentially malicious individuals have turned to public school systems in the latest reports of computer breaches.

NBC affiliate KNSD reported that prior to the incident in San Diego, a number of cybersecurity incidents involving schools and health care systems had been reported in California, including an attack on The Los Angeles Unified School District in September that locked up the district’s files and demanded a ransom payment, before thousands of files were stolen and then leaked on the dark web (https://ibn.fm/C0lZa).

Businesses and public entities may represent a wide variety of organizational sizes and purposes, but they all share the common need for technological security against invasive threats from across the Internet.

A report by cybersecurity student Matthew McKenzie on Tripwire, Inc.’s web forum indicates that small to medium-sized businesses have become malicious computer experts’ ideal targets because the SMBs tend to lack the experience, budget and infrastructure necessary to ward off computer network invasions.

Small businesses with less than 100 employees will experience 350 percent more social engineering attacks than larger enterprises, and 60 percent of small companies go out of business within six months of falling victim to a data breach or cyber-attack, the report states (https://ibn.fm/SwtK5).

Virtual chief information security officer experts at SideChannel (OTCQB: SDCH) are dedicated to matching vCISOs with SMBs to help even the playing field in terms of Internet security in the broader marketplace.

“Small and mid-market companies are incredibly challenged by a lack of cost-effective means to comfortably and securely handle network management,” SideChannel Executive Vice President David Chasteen stated in September when the company rolled out its Enclave microsegmentation software platform as a solution for SMB cybersecurity needs (https://ibn.fm/EqZMw). “These companies want to focus on their business and their customers; not worry about who is accessing what server, or if the encryption installed is sufficient. We built Enclave to provide these companies an affordable and effective segmentation solution that significantly reduces the amount of effort required, through a simple and intuitive interface.”

In-house CISOs currently earn an average salary of $200,000 annually in the United States, according to a Security Boulevard report on how virtual CISOs are changing cybersecurity availability for SMBs.

“Hiring a full-time security expert can be expensive and also create inflexibility. The hiring company is wedded to its security expert, in essence. Locating a new person is time-consuming and expensive. Thus, the cost of hiring the wrong CISO can be prohibitive,” the report states (https://ibn.fm/s4H5N). “The virtual CISO model is helping small companies overcome this hurdle. Small businesses can hire and evaluate vCISOs in a real-world environment before deciding to commit to their services over the long term. The contractual nature of the position makes it easy for firms to replace talent, should they be inadequate.”

For more information, visit the company’s website at www.SideChannel.com.

NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to SDCH are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/SDCH

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