The Cobar Business Association will be holding two workshops in October as part of NSW Small Business Month activities.
Coordinated by the NSW Small Business Commission, NSW Small Business Month is a program created for small businesses across NSW to attend events aligned to their individual business interests.
It’s all about providing opportunities for small businesses to take the time to work on their business in October.
This year’s theme is ‘My Small Business’ and is focused on providing assistance and tips on how small business can strengthen their business in seven key areas—branding and marketing, cyber security, business health, ecommerce, current market conditions, resilience and teams.
Cobar Business Association president Sharon Harland said working with Cobar Shire Council’s grants officer Bethany Smith, they were able to secure grant funding to hold two workshops in Cobar during October.
“The first workshop is centered on Cyber Security and will be presented by Meagan Willard from the Tronic Group and JTSM.
“With cyber crime on the rise, I think this workshop is going to be helpful to a lot of businesses, not only to new businesses who are just starting out but to others who have been in business for a number of years and are not sure if their security is up to date,” Mrs Harland said.
Meagan and Tronic principal Tom Shanahan have recently partnered together in a new business venture to provide a Cyber Security Consultancy Service to businesses in Regional NSW.
“We have found over the past three years that the Cyber Security landscape has significantly changed and small/medium businesses are now experiencing higher instances of cyber security incidents,” Meagan said.
“A lot of businesses in this region often feel they are “too small” or “who cares about us in Outback NSW” to be a target of Cyber Security criminals, but unfortunately that is no longer the case and everyone, regardless of location, is now a target.
“Businesses are leaving themselves vulnerable to attacks and we are finding that we are responding to a lot of incidents where business have been affected by credential fraud, and other cyber-attacks that could have been easily prevented or mitigated.
“We’re really excited to be part of this workshop for the Cobar community,” Meagan said.
“This Cyber Security workshop is the perfect opportunity for us to promote this message and to provide important information to small businesses on how to better protect themselves in the online world.”
The free workshop (with light refreshments provided) runs for one hour and will be followed by a Q&A session.
During the workshop Meagan will explain what Cyber Security is; give an overview of Phishing, Malware, Ransomware, etc; discuss business risks such as credential fraud and the importance of MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication); explain the ‘Essential Eight’; and also point you in the right direction of where to find further information.
Mrs Harland said they were currently finalising the details of their second workshop which will be focused on My Small Business Team and led by former resident, Tanya Gilbert.
