5 Reasons Why Sustainable Cybersecurity Is More Business-Critical Than Ever Before

Julie Starr • May 4, 2022



Every business worth its salt today knows that cybersecurity is an important issue. Companies are more connected than ever before, and they rely more intensely on their digital assets than they did even five years ago. 

However, with the explosion in the digital economy has come ever-greater security risks. Cybersecurity is becoming less sustainable. Hackers, both private and state-backed, threaten companies across the board and can cause tremendous disruption. Even small players, such as kids in dorm rooms, can cause millions of dollars worth of losses if they get a lucky break. State-sponsored attacks can bring down entire power grids and Fortune 500 enterprises. 

Cybersecurity, therefore, is becoming more business-critical. Criminals are becoming more brazen in their attacks, and the losses are potentially higher than they ever were before. 

In this post, we take a look at some of the reasons why implementing sustainable cybersecurity is more business-critical than ever before. In this post, you’ll learn why it matters and, hopefully, why you should take action right now to bolster your defenses. 

Cyberattacks Affect Everyone

If you think that hackers only go after big business, you’re sadly mistaken. While high-profile brands have come under attack in the past, they’re not the only target. In fact, criminals attempt to compromise security at small businesses far more often, mainly because they are softer targets. 

Don’t fall into the trap of believing that you have nothing to offer hackers. Even though you run a small business, there is still value in your data, and accessing your network. If hackers can get user names, passwords, credit card details, or mission-critical data, they can easily profit from their attacks. 

Small businesses face around 4,000 hacks every day. The most common demand is ransom payments for the release of data. Companies wind up forking out hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps even millions, to get their money back. 

Even if your company isn’t attacked, you can still suffer the fallout. A digital attack on a nuclear power plant, for instance, could lead to a level of devastation that forces you to shut down operations for a time. In this scenario, it’s not just the loss of money that’s the problem, but the loss of life as well. 

Rapid Changes In Technology Are Leading To More Hacking Opportunities

The pace of digital change accelerated dramatically after 2010. Cloud computing and smartphones combined to produce a digital landscape that both firms and consumers enjoy today. 

However, this pace of development was a nightmare for cyber security companies . By 2009, they were just about getting to grips with protecting conventional operating systems from cyberattacks. However, after mass cloud computing, that all changed. New integrated technologies meant new vulnerabilities for hackers to exploit, and that’s exactly what happened. 

For instance, cloud computing grew by around 50 percent per year after 2012. During the build-out phase, hackers exploited a vast array of vulnerabilities and brought many companies to their knees. New frontiers now include IoT, which is yet to have a fully-fleshed out security architecture, and AI. Hackers are even developing machine learning tools that make it easier for them to identify and exploit weaknesses in company defenses. 

The Damage To Business Is Enormous

Hackers are causing tremendous damage to businesses and organizations across the world. Furthermore, it’s not just the direct cost of the attack, either, that’s the problem. That’s often manageable. Instead, it’s the brand reputation and the massive fines that governments impose on firms that fail to protect their data. It’s one of the few examples where the victim of a crime gets punished. 

Big companies across the globe have fallen foul of hacks. Facebook, for instance, saw more than 540 million customer records exposed because of a data breach on AWS. Equifax also lost 147 million customer records to hackers, costing the firm an estimated $439 million. Even the NHS in the UK was brought to its knees by hackers by an attack that resulted in the loss of patient records and difficulties in cleaning up afterward. 

Failed Cybersecurity Policy Is Leading To Increasing Regulations

Governments aren’t happy about the fact that companies are falling foul of hackers and are actively looking to punish those that do. From the standpoint of the authorities, it is the responsibility of firms to protect themselves and their customers against malicious entities, not the other way around. 

While these laws are unfair, they are likely coming, if they are not already here. Already there are laws that allow both consumers and governments themselves to litigate against firms that fail to adequately protect data. In the future, the laws are likely to become more draconian and firms are going to have to step up their cybersecurity efforts, whether or not they have the resources to do so. 

Cybercrime Damages Personal Privacy

Even though governments reserve the right to scrutinize your personal finances and install cameras that watch you wherever you go, they have different standards for private enterprise. Companies must protect personal privacy at all costs, or face fines. 

In today’s cybersecurity environment, that’s a problem. There are so many different types of potential attacks, including worms, phishing, viruses and malware. In some cases, simply fraud is sufficient to compromise a network. Better passwords won’t cut it. 

As such, personal data loss is a major issue. Yahoo, for instance, lost three billion customer accounts to hackers in a 2013 breach, an event that nearly wiped out the company and left Google unchallenged. 

What’s more, around one in fifteen people globally fall foul of cybercrime every year, meaning that if you’ve escaped it so far, you’re one of the lucky ones. Identity fraud is a major issue. 

Unfortunately, rates of cybercrime are increasing. Around 70 percent of business leaders believe that their organizations are vulnerable to an attack . Only a small percentage said that they had systems in place to defend themselves from the full array of potential attacks out there. 

Therefore, companies like yours need to act now to make network protection sustainable. If you can’t afford to bring cybersecurity in-house, outsource your networks and make them someone else’s responsibility.

Smart Sensors, Smarter Supply Chains: Enhancing Traceability in Food & Beverage

By Julie Starr • June 20, 2025
In today’s competitive food and beverage (F&B) landscape, traceability is no longer a compliance checkbox—it’s a differentiator. The ability to track every step of a product’s journey, from origin to shelf, is vital for regulatory accuracy and to ensure brand integrity, supply chain agility, and consumer trust. Add smart sensors to the mix: the quiet, tireless observers revolutionizing supply chain intelligence. Traceability Has a Data Problem Despite digitization across many F&B operations, most traceability systems still rely on fragmented or manual data inputs. Batch numbers, barcodes, and handwritten logs often stand between a supplier and clarity when things go wrong. This approach struggles with latency and scale. When contamination or delays occur, root cause analysis is slow, costly, and damaging. Smart sensors shift this paradigm by embedding real-time, contextual intelligence into every stage of the supply chain . Whether monitoring humidity in transit or recording fill-level precision in bottling plants, they remove the guesswork by turning physical conditions into structured, time-stamped data. From Passive Monitoring to Active Optimization Sensors used to be reactive tools, alerting operators to anomalies. But smart sensors now play a proactive role in process control. They measure, and they interpret. For example, temperature sensors embedded in cold chain logistics can dynamically adjust cooling systems or flag threshold breaches before spoilage occurs. These advancements reduce waste and loss at a systemic level. In a production facility, smart sensors integrated with PLCs can enforce recipe compliance, verify clean-in-place processes, and detect micro-stoppages in real-time. This enables operations to pivot faster and isolate inefficiencies before they cascade downstream. Trust is Built on Transparency Consumers are paying more attention to what they eat and drink. They’re looking beyond labels, expecting visibility into how ingredients are sourced, processed, and handled. Smart sensors make this level of transparency achievable —without burdening manufacturers with excessive manual oversight. By capturing metadata throughout production and distribution, these sensors create a digital footprint that’s tamper-resistant and instantly accessible. When this data is integrated with a central platform, brands can respond confidently to audits, recalls, and quality assurance challenges with a level of precision that would be impossible through legacy systems. Intelligence Without Infrastructure Overhaul One common misconception is that adding smart sensors requires a top-down reinvention of supply chain infrastructure. In reality, companies can deploy edge sensors in a modular, scalable way. Many modern solutions offer plug-and-play functionality, allowing for fast integration with existing machinery and MES systems. This is where suppliers like alps-machine.com are reshaping expectations. Rather than pushing proprietary ecosystems, they design sensor-ready equipment with interoperability in mind. This future-proofs investment and keeps businesses nimble in the face of regulatory or market shifts. Designing for Data Longevity Sensors are only as powerful as the context they capture. A smart implementation ensures the data collected can be standardized, stored securely, and accessed meaningfully across departments. This means moving beyond local dashboards toward centralized, queryable datasets that inform everything from supplier contracts to marketing claims. As AI and predictive analytics become more accessible, these data-rich environments will unlock new capabilities—such as predicting demand spikes based on real-time freshness indicators or adjusting production schedules dynamically based on in-transit sensor feedback. Final Thoughts: Smarter Isn’t Optional Traceability isn’t solved by more paperwork—it’s solved by embedded intelligence. Smart sensors don’t just help businesses know what happened; they help prevent the wrong things from happening at all. For companies in the food and beverage sector, adopting smart sensors is less about chasing innovation and more about enabling resilience, speed, and confidence in every decision.

Eco-Friendly Garden Prep: Summer Tips for a Greener Business Space

By Julie Starr • June 5, 2025
If you're lucky enough to have a garden as part of your business, taking some time to set it up for summer is a great investment of your energy. Not only will it be ready for your customers to spend time in, but you can also incorporate some eco-friendly elements into it. Many people just think about the property and what eco-friendly updates they can make , but there are plenty that you can implement in your garden. This gives you the best of both worlds. You own a sacred and beautiful place for your customers to spend their summer, and at the same time, you can do your part for a better planet. If this is the route you want to take, then you also need to consider how to do this with the different seasons. To help you on your journey, here are some top tips for preparing your garden for summer. Plant trees and flowers Planting trees and flowers in your garden is a must. It will make a beautiful scene of nature for everyone to enjoy. Trees will provide people and animals with shade, as well as provide a habitat for wildlife. More trees are needed in the world because they purify the air that we breathe. Flowers, especially if you plant with pollinators in mind, can be an excellent way to attract bees and butterflies, which contribute largely to the earth. Use natural pest control When preparing your garden for summer, you can do this more sustainably and kindly by using natural pest control. Simply by planting trees and flowers, you are likely to attract lots of different wildlife, some of which may destroy your efforts. While all wildlife should be considered, you may need to take measures. Some better and more eco-friendly ways you can do this, as opposed to spraying toxic chemicals onto your plants and into the air, you can implement companion planting, using protective nets over your crops, choosing resilient plants, using natural repellents, and encouraging natural predators so nature can do its thing. Maintain your garden Maintaining your garden in itself can make it more eco-friendly. Composting your garden waste regularly, and kitchen waste can help you to reduce overall waste and create nutrient-rich soil. This is a great cycle of sustainability. You can also keep on top of things that need cleaning and replacing, so you can recycle the materials for other garden structures and projects, and repurpose things around your garden before they become waste. If you have features in your garden like a swimming pool, then a regular pool maintenance service is going to be vital in keeping your water consumption to a minimum, as when it is cleaned and maintained, it will need to be drained and refilled less as well as using less energy. You could also consider how you can use natural purification methods to reduce chemical usage and support biodiversity right in your backyard. Your garden is just an eco-friendly project waiting to be built. Use these top tips to help you get started.