LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – Cybercrime is a threat for many Americans, including small businesses.
More than 40% of small businesses were victims of a cyberattack in 2023, according to the SBA. A majority of them won’t survive because of the financial losses.
Ali Qadri, who owns Iceberg Diamonds inside the Boulevard Mall, says cybersecurity was never a top priority until now. His family started the business 25 years ago.
“The last thing that you want to happen is an attack on your security and now you have a huge problem to deal with,” Qadri said. “As a small business you don’t have the bandwidth as some of these larger corporations do.”
A friend told him about UNLV’s Cyber Clinic. It’s a student and volunteer run organization that provides free cybersecurity services to small businesses in the Las Vegas Valley.
“We actually do that cybersecurity centric assessment with physical security as well to make sure everything is locked down, we also look at IT infrastructure from a cybersecurity lens,” Mehdi Abid, a cyber program administrator with the clinic said. ”So if a small business were to want to get a service like we are offering from a professional, it would be anywhere in the neighborhood of about $20,000.”
It was created four years ago to help students get jobs after college. So far, more than 40 businesses have used the clinic.
“It is not just enough to have a degree we found, you actually have to have some sort of hands on experience so a lot of our students would come back after graduating and say they weren’t hired,” he said.
Abid says the most common issue business owners neglect is not knowing what’s in a contract with a third-party software company.
Qadri’s assessment came back positive.
“It took a lot off of my plate knowing that I have someone that can help me who can give me information,” Qadri said.
The clinic is funded by grants from the National Security Agency, Google and SBA.
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