Cybersecurity in a Recession: Lessons from the Great Recession for 2025

Cyber Moves During Tough Times – Do’s & Don’ts Business Leaders Want To Know About To Succeed

Let’s be honest—you don’t need an economist to tell you that a recession is in the air. You feel it in hiring slowdowns, budget freezes, and the growing conversations about “doing more with less.”

Heck, even the Federal Government is making cuts to get its house in order. If that doesn’t tell you something about where things are headed, nothing will.

For business leaders, this isn’t just about surviving—it’s about making the right moves now so that six months from now, you’re not looking back, wishing you had done things differently.

One of the biggest mistakes we saw during the Great Recession was businesses cutting cybersecurity first, thinking it was a cost center instead of a business necessity. We know how that played out.

🔹 Employees committed identity theft—stealing customer or co-worker information and selling it to stay afloat.

🔹 Insider threats skyrocketed—because when people are struggling, ethics get “flexible.”

🔹 Businesses ignored cybersecurity to cut costs—only to get hit with fraud, lawsuits, and regulatory fines.

It was like driving around with expired tags, knowing full well you haven’t paid your registration. You tell yourself, “Maybe if I drive casual enough, the cops won’t notice.”

You avoid main roads. Park two blocks away from your office. Every cop car you see sends your heart into overdrive.

That was corporate cybersecurity during the Great Recession—just hoping the hackers wouldn’t notice them.

But just like that one cop who always spots expired tags, cybercriminals were on the lookout—and businesses that gambled on invisibility? They paid the price.

Fast forward to 2025, and here we are again, bracing for a potential economic downturn. But this time, the stakes are higher. Why?

• Cyber insurance isn’t your safety net anymore—just ask the Catholic high school that suffered a domain takeover. They called their insurance company for help. Four days later, no response.
• Third-party risk is a nightmare—If your vendors get hacked, your business gets dragged down.
• Cybercriminals love chaos. They know companies are distracted, downsizing, and cutting corners, and they will exploit every gap.

Survival Mode: What NOT to Do

If you’re thinking about cost-cutting, don’t repeat the Great Recession’s mistakes. Here’s what won’t work:

❌ “We have cyber insurance, we’re fine.” Wrong. You still need an incident response plan because insurance companies don’t move at the speed of an attack. When the shite hits the fan, you need a team ready to go—yesterday.

❌ “We’re too small to be a target.” Think again. Ransomware kits are automated, and attackers don’t care about your revenue size—only whether they can get in.

❌ “We’ll cut back on cybersecurity and beef it up later.” That’s like canceling your health insurance and hoping you don’t get sick. The cost of one breach can sink your business faster than a bad quarter.

Smart Cyber Moves for Tough Times

✅ Terminate access for laid-off employees immediately. Insider threats spike in recessions. Don’t wait until someone remembers they still have access to payroll, customer databases, or financials.

✅ Train your remaining staff. They’ll be taking on extra responsibilities, including not clicking on that phishing email that will wreck your network.

✅ Use managed security services like MyCSO Operations & MyCSO Assurance. You still need 24/7 security—even if your internal team is stretched thin.

✅ Have your incident response team on speed dial. Not your insurance company. Not your IT guy who’s busy with a firewall update. A real response team that knows what to do the second things go sideways.

✅ Prepare for worst-case scenarios. Breaches, downtime, lawsuits—if you don’t have a disaster recovery plan (or haven’t updated it in the last 6 months), now is the time.

Your Cybersecurity Program Can Help You GROW Revenue

Companies that take security seriously don’t just survive downturns—they win contracts, retain customers, and build resilience.

• Cyber insurance costs go down when your risk is under control.
• Customers and partners trust you more because you’re not the weakest link.
• Downtime and breach costs? Avoided.

🔗 Don’t wait for a breach to wake up your business. Schedule a Cyber Risk Review with NCX Group and secure your future.

P.S. The best time to invest in cybersecurity was yesterday. The second-best time? Right now. Because if you think cybersecurity is expensive—wait until you see the cost of a breach. 🚨

Repost from LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cybersecurity-recession-lessons-from-great-2025-mike-fitzpatrick-vi1qf/