Startups
Startups are integral to American economic success with five million new businesses established yearly, creating 3.7 million jobs. Keeping a small business in the black isn’t easy — 40% of startups fail before their fourth year, and just over 50% make it through year five. It is also estimated approximately 60% of small businesses fail within 6 months of a data breach. While challenges such as staffing, marketing and customer churn are a continuing challenge, the rise of tech-savvy consumers has created a paradox. Even as digital transformation empowers business success, it introduces key security risks. Here’s how HALOCK Security Labs’ cybersecurity for startups can help reduce the risk of infosec incidents, discover potential weaknesses, and improve overall defense.
Start Small, Think Big
It’s easy for startups to view their IT as inherently safe — after all, why would hackers bother with smaller businesses when large-scale operations handle huge volumes of valuable data? IT security for startups may also take a back seat given the sheer number of mission-critical tasks that require owners’ attention. If technology services are working “well enough,” why make changes? Here’s the hard truth: Startups are often in the line of fire for digital compromise precisely because they don’t have built-in cybersecurity controls or well-articulated infosec policies. Hackers looking to test new threat vectors or grab consumer data may prioritize startups since there’s a lower chance of attacks being detected, identified, and mitigated. Clearly, startups can’t afford to ignore IT security.
REGULATORY UPDATE: The SEC’s rules on Cybersecurity Risk Management, Strategy, Governance, and Incident Disclosure require public companies to describe their cybersecurity programs in their periodic reporting and how they manage RISK.
Your Startup Partner
HALOCK Security Labs offers multiple cyber security solutions for startups, including:
- Risk Based Threat Assessment: Improve protection against the five MITRE ATT&CK Types. Prioritize security controls to enhance or implement using the best threat data the cybersecurity community offers, leveraging the HALOCK Industry Threat (HIT) Index, a model for estimating the most likely (and least likely) ways your organization will be hit by a cybersecurity or information security attack.
- HALOCK’s Cloud Security Assessment: Gain insight on your risks. The assessment provides a review of Azure, AWS, and Google (GCP) cloud environments to identify risk and recommends how to remediate them.
- Consulting — Our IT security consulting for startups identifies key issues, suggests necessary remediation and includes custom-built solutions to meet business needs.
- Compliance — From privacy regulations such as HIPAA and GDPR to startup PCI compliance, our experts ensure your data handling and storage processes meet evolving expectations. For PCI DSS, ensure you have implemented the proper standards for your specific cardholder data environment (CDE). Understand changes in password requirements, training, Targeted Risk Analysis (TRA), scanning, outsourcing eCommerce, automation, and more. We can help you achieve and maintain PCI Compliance. Learn how these requires impact your program.
- Penetration testing — Not all vulnerabilities are obvious. HALOCK Security Labs’ penetration testing helps find and secure potential failure points. Verify your technical safeguards with external network, internal network, internal wireless, web application, social engineering, assumed breach, adversary simulation, and remediation verification penetration testing.
- Incident Response – When a breach does occur, you need to address the attack immediately, contain it, and remediate the threat. Having a trusted, expert incident response team to stop, fix, and an ongoing incident response process and plan to keep your data secure. Train your team with tabletop exercises to be prepared to address an attack on your organization.
- Mergers & Acquisition (M&A): As part of the due diligence process of an M&A, organizations must understand the risk and security profile of their partner or target company. You must determine what liabilities or risks can arise under the other company’s cybersecurity program. With HALOCK’s M&A program, we can help you through the entire process from pre-acquisition to post-acquisition to identify risks, remediation steps, and establish reasonable security.
- Third Party Risk Management (TPRM)/Vendor Risk Management – Ensure third-party partners are aligned with your organization’s risk controls. Vendors and contractors serve as an extension of your group. They represent you and should operate under your business requirements. A recent Panorays study revealed 41% of organizations are not sure if their suppliers were out of compliance in the past year. It also indicated that half of the respondents cited third party risk as one of the top 5 items in their risk register and expect this risk to increase. A required best practice is to always conduct a supplier risk assessment to keep your vendors on point with your security posture. HALOCK can help build and manage a specific program for your new environment.
- Risk Assessments – Regulations require your safeguards be reasonable to your organization, customers, and partners. With many frameworks available, how do you establish your acceptable risk? The Duty of Care Risk Assessment (DoCRA) helps you define a balanced security strategy factoring in compliance and safeguards based on your specific business and objectives. With the release of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Cybersecurity rules on disclosure, it’s essential that you regularly review your risk profile. Establishing the Duty of Care Risk Analysis (DoCRA) approach will help you build a legally defensible security strategy.
- Privacy – CCPA is the most sweeping legislation to date in the U.S. that concerns the protection of personal information. It broadens the definition of what constitutes personal information and gives California citizens greater control over what companies can do with their personal data. The California privacy law includes the right to exempt their own personal information from being shared or purchased on the open market. Understand the impact this change and other states’ requirements have on your organization.
Cybersecurity & Risk News, Updates, Resources
Cybersecurity Awareness Posters
Be Our Guest at FutureCon Chicago 2026
Enjoy breakfast and lunch while connecting with colleagues and industry executives.
Session: Why AI Can’t Fix Your Cyber Risk (and Might Be Making It Worse)
Speaker: Chris Cronin, ISO 27001 Auditor | Partner, HALOCK and Reasonable Risk | Board Chair, The DoCRA Council
DATE: Thursday, January 29, 2026
WHERE: Live In Person | Virtual | Hybrid @ Chicago Marriott Oak Brook
CREDITS: Earn up to 10 CPE Credits
Review Your Security and Risk Profile
