The Secret to Driving Small Business Innovation, Securely As more business functions are powered by the internet, successful companies need the right tools to achieve growth while protecting their assets.

In today's digital age, internet connectivity has become a powerful catalyst for innovation, offering endless opportunities for small businesses to thrive and compete. Connectivity provides an effective tool for entrepreneurs to reach new markets, serve customers in new ways, empower employees, and rapidly iterate their products or services.

But as more companies lean on digital tools to drive innovation, the need for secure internet connections becomes imperative. A security breach can have devastating consequences for a small business, resulting in financial losses, damage to the company's reputation, loss of customer trust, and other ramifications. Small businesses might struggle to recover from such incidents, which can lead to significant disruptions or even closure.

The case for security.

As businesses do more online, valuable data such as financial information, intellectual property, transactions, or customer data is often stored in the cloud. This makes cybersecurity critically important to minimize risk not only for the business but for their customers or vendors as well, says Christian Nascimento, VP of Product Management and Strategy at Comcast Business.

"A cybersecurity hack doesn't just affect the business—the web of that impact spreads out to their customers, partners, and beyond, so companies have an obligation to their employees, themselves, and their whole ecosystem to use security solutions so their connectivity is secure," he says.

For example, a shocking 42% of small businesses have been the victims of cyberattacks, according to research conducted by research firm AdvisorSmith. By prioritizing internet security, small businesses can better protect their assets and sensitive information, maintain the trust of their customers, and help safeguard their business.

"Companies need to think of the internet as a tool," Nascimento says. "They need the right type of bandwidth, speed, and security to ensure that they can conduct their digital business activities."

Nascimento believes that the more a business relies on technology to power and accelerate operations, the more they can focus on the things that they do best: finding customers, hiring the best talent, growing revenue, and expanding into new markets.

Powering small-business innovation.

As an internet provider, Comcast Business helps small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) stay connected and online for a variety of business cases. "The ways that SMBs can use internet connectivity to drive innovation is to identify the things that they need to be more efficient at or the things they need to grow their business, and leverage internet connectivity to drive solutions for those business problems. Whether it's for powering back-office business applications, doing social media marketing, or using a cloud-based point-of-sales system to process customer orders, connectivity is the lifeblood of a small business," Nascimento says.

In addition to keeping businesses connected, Comcast Business also offers security solutions that can help defend against cyberattacks. Take Comcast Business SecurityEdge™ for example, which layers on top of Comcast Business Internet to help protect all connected devices to the network from malware, phishing scams, ransomware, and botnet attacks. From February 2021 to March 2022 alone, 605 million botnet, malware, and phishing attacks were blocked by SecurityEdge™.

"When we provide connectivity for a business, we're doing it in a way that meets their needs, solves problems, and can offer solutions that help protect their network and keep them informed when breach attempts occur. Hopefully that gives them some peace of mind as well," Nascimento says.

Click here to learn more about how Comcast Business can help drive innovation at your business.