The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

TRIBUNE Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMIAN businesses have suffered a 230 percent increase in cyber attacks over the past five years, a technology principal disclosed yesterday, revealing that this nation becomes an immediate target “when we make the news”.

Robert Albury, managing director at Abaco-based Waves IT, told a panel discussion at the Abaco Business Outlook that The Bahamas seemed to attract waves of hackers and digital-based attacks whenever it makes global headlines as he warned that preventative measures are often “overlooked” - especially that staff are usually “the first line of defence”.

Noting that small businesses, especially, are likely to be the most vulnerable to such crimes and neglect defensive measures, he argued that staff training is “the biggest thing businesses can do for their cyber security” as opposed to investments in software and programming.

“[It’s[ getting your staff to understand they may be the first vector of attack,” Mr Albury said. “Phishing e-mails, ransomware, these are all things that cripple businesses and, in the past five years, we have seen about a 230 percent increase in attacks targeting businesses in The Bahamas and the Family Islands especially.

“Post-Dorian, while we were all trying to recover, a lot of businesses trying to get up and running first, they were bombarded with Phishing scams where you get a call saying ‘Hi, I’m from Microsoft. I want to help you recover’. The second we make news or there’s anything popular going on here, wee become an attractive vector.

“People start sending e-mails and trying to get into your system, and your staff is the first line of defence… As simple as don’t open the e-mail, don’t click the link. ‘Hey, why is Microsoft telling me it is trying to share a file with me but I don’t use Microsoft?’ Things like that, those are the biggest threats we see in Abaco, especially with the staff aspect of it.”

Besides building cyber security resilience among the Abaco business community, Mr Albury, a lead technology consultant, said he has also been working to improve the private sector’s ability to withstand Bahamas Power & Light’s (BPL) frequent power outages and unreliable supply. He added that some clients now have UPS’s in place to ensure they remain operational until back-up generators kick-in.

Citing Quality Star Auto as an example, the Waves IT chief said: “The forecourt goes down when the power cuts-off. We’re looking at a battery-based solution that’s going to operate as power for those pumps, and we’ve taken a lot of their sales systems and put them on batteries that run for eight to 12 hours because, in that business, your retail is your essential.

“Every time a customer comes in and they have to walk out the door because the system is down, or you cannot service someone coming in to buy a water or something quick, that’s lost sales. That’s the big thing there. Identifying where your system falls down because of lack of power and creating a solution to keep them active.”

Victoria Albury, Leno Corporate Services’ group assistant vice-president of business development for the Northern Bahamas, told the same panel that businesses who fail to give risk management and business continuity plans the same priority as their rivals will be outshone by the competition and, potentially, forced out of business.

“You need to have resilience,” she warned. “If you don’t have the resilience, and don’t have those things in place, you will not be operational and, quite frankly, the store front down the road that has those plans in place will still be operational so it really is a necessity at this point in time that you make sure you have these things in place and protect yourself so that you are protecting all your stakeholders. Business plan is the key.”

Mr Albury echoed this by warning that Abaco consumers are very unforgiving of businesses that fail to meet their needs and deliver the required service. “After Dorian, all our clients that had continuity plans in place were able to rebuild and just snap up quickly, and were operational in relatively quick time after the tragedy of Dorian.

“We had other clients who, at the time, did not want to put these plans in place, did not want to spend $200-$300 now, and they didn’t bounce back. They recovered slowly. Here in Abaco, if you don’t service the customer, they will replace you. New businesses pop up that target” the very same client base with better, more reliable service.

Leno’s Ms Albury, meanwhile, urged Bahamians and companies alike to change their “mindset: when it comes to succession planning and not view this as a threat. She also called on the private sector to “open our minds” to the multiple forms of financing available for business expansion outside the Bahamian commercial banking sector, while adding that small Family Island-based firms, in particular, need to abandon “shoe box” record-keeping.

“Succession planning is a big thing in my mind because I feel like Bahamian companies do not focus enough on succession planning because we are all nervous about somebody taking my job,” Ms Albury said. “We should be training our people to take our jobs, and just as our boss should be training us to take his job, and so on and so forth.

“We need to get out of the mindset that succession planning is a threat to us because it really is a benefit to the business. And I also think as far as finance is concerned, people have traditionally gone to the bank for their improvements, their growth, their business expansion, whatever it may be as far as business loans are concerned.

“We need to encourage people to be a little bit more creative about how they want to garner their funds for capital growth… I think that, as companies, we need to open our minds as to what financial options are available to businesses,” Ms Albury added.

“I also like to encourage young people to borrow while your business is in good standing. Get that credit going. When you need it, you’re not necessarily in good standing, and then you are going to be in a jam. So I encourage people - ‘Ms Albury, why do I need to borrow now?’ - to just do it. Even if it’s a small loan. Finance to your advantage.”

As for book-keeping, the Leno executive said many businesses do not know how they are performing financially because of the poor state of their financial records. “A lot of the smaller businesses are just ‘shoe box’ record-keeping,” Ms Albury asserted. “They are not really using any proper protocol for their finances, and you don’t know how your company is doing until you measure and quantify it.

“If you are just keeping receipts and saying ‘that account looked pretty good today’, that’s not a good reflection on how you are going to improve your business.” Ms Albury said she urged entrepreneurs and businesses to seek professional help, such as from qualified accountants, if it was needed and to “run receipts and see where your business is; whether it’s progressing or regressing” using computer accounting software.