Every customer you have and every prospect you speak to has one thing in common—they never want to experience a security breach. The odds are not in their favor, however, as more than 90% of customer environments have multiple types of security gaps, and most organizations do not have a dedicated security expert on staff.

Almost every day the media reports on attacks at large and small companies that confirm that cybercrime is real and dangerous. In the latest breach report from Identity Theft Resource Center, 591 breaches were identified and more than 175,000,000 records exposed from January 1, 2015 to October 6, 2015.

Between your customers’ fear and the real threat of a breach, a security conversation is an easy onramp into securing business from new customers and supplementing business from existing customers.

 These four questions are conversation starters for small and medium-sized businesses. Once you establish your credibility and security expertise, business owners will seek you out to keep their companies safe.

1. How are you preventing malware and viruses from entering your company and damaging your business?

Malware and viruses are the culprits of the majority of cyberattacks. Businesses put themselves at risk when they don’t update their antivirus and antimalware software or rely on outdated technology that cannot catch the advanced threats that are arriving from sophisticated hackers located across the globe.
 

In 2013, 44% of SMBs reported being a victim of a cyberattack. The majority of these companies (59%) experienced a service attack, 35% had their email accounts hijacked and 19% had a web site outage. A complete antimalware and antivirus protections solution prevents virus and malware attacks plus provides messaging security and antispam detection. 
 

2. Do you have anyone on staff dedicated to leading and implementing your security strategy?

More than 83% of SMBs don’t have a plan for cybersecurity and 79% don’t understand cybersecurity. Rather than hiring a security expert, SMBs can rely on a managed service provider with internal security expertise and industry-leading solutions to fill in any security gaps and fix vulnerabilities that come from employees, mobile devices and other personal devices.
 

3. Are your employees using personal devices, laptops, tablets, or smartphones, to access emails, company systems or the wired or wireless network?

If they are, the organization is vulnerable to dangerous URLs, out-of-date software patches, malware, unauthorized software, unsecured remote access sessions, and malicious emails.
 

4. If your company experiences an attack from malware or a virus, what is your response plan?

Less than 50 percent of SMBs have a breach response plan. A large portion (61%)¹ have not purchased new security tools, which means they are leaving themselves open to fast-changing malware and virus threats.

Use one, two, or all these questions to kick start a conversation about security. You will be amazed at how quickly customers will engage and move from “curious” to “come in and show us what you can do.” Once you’ve shown your expertise in security and proven that you’re a trusted partner, customers will be open and eager to hear your ideas and suggestions for other services and products.