On July 28 The Toronto Star announced the results of a recent IBM Security report – according to the report, the average cost of a data breach in Canada hit new a record in 2021, an average of $6.75 million per incident, up from $6.35 million the year before and the highest since IBM first included Canada in its survey seven years ago. It’s not good news.

The cost of a data breach in Canada is also higher than the 2021 global average of US$4.24 million ($5.34 million), which in itself is a 10 per cent increase from the prior year and the highest global average in the survey’s 17-year history. According to the study, data breaches cost $1 million more on average when remote work was indicated as a factor in the event.

Canada is home to more than 1.15 million small businesses, with a population of approximately 38 million and a labor force of about half this number, around 19 million. As in so many of the world’s industrialized nations, Canada’s economy is largely dominated by services, including banking and finance, education, healthcare, IT and retail, all of which are undergoing massive digital transformation.

So it seems many of Canada’s small businesses are impaled on the antlers of a dilemma: 2021 is now the year of “work from anywhere” and the year of record data breaches across the country. The problem is how to undergo a digital transformation without sacrificing the security you need. Where to start? With your telephony.

Even with the migration of so much everyday business activity to the Internet, your telephony is the bedrock of your operations. Yes, you may rely on emails and Hangouts and Zoom, but at the end of the day you still need a robust, resilient telephone system.

The Vodia cloud PBX is the industry standard and a telephone system that works from anywhere – it’s the last tool companies need to work from home. It gives you real-time talk with an imperceptible delay. Our best-in-class PBX integrates with Microsoft Teams out of the box: it’s tailored for remote environments, so your team can use their mobile devices as their office extensions, making it possible for everyone to work from anywhere.

Not only do we make it so you can work from anywhere, we make it so you can do it securely. Thanks to our HTTPS and WSS, it’s guaranteed all Vodia cloud PBX data exchanges are always secure: as a precaution it’s actually impossible to initiate the call, or do anything from the user portal, unless HTTPS is used.

We also have a sophisticated mechanism in place that tracks login attempts and, if it detects any malicious activity, the IP is blacklisted right away. Admins can also check login activity for clear indication of unsuccessful login attempts. And we have a password strength setting to make sure the PBX is impassable by unauthorized users. We have designed our PBX to protect the integrity of your data.  More information about the security of our PBX is available here.

Finally, a cloud PBX is far less expensive than an old-fashioned PBX. Our goal is to reduce your telephony costs and spare you the massive, debilitating expense of a data breach.

We work with outstanding distributors and resellers across Canada, and we’d love to put you in touch with them. Interested? Get in touch with us, sales@vodia.com.

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