Business owners will go to great lengths to keep their workplace safe while completely neglecting IT security and their multifunctional devices. In 2009, IT security breaches cost the average company $800,000 (Tattrie, 2009). These figures represent a 97 percent increase over 2008. The $800,000 includes labor lost when a breach shuts down systems, the cost to repair the damage caused by the breach, and the cost to replace faulty security. This is a rather large sum which is also highly avoidable. Due to the escalation in Internet use, the number of cybersecurity breaches suffered by businesses over the past year has increased rapidly. Breaches can come from external attacks as well as within a company's walls. External attacks are serious, but the threat created by a company's employees can be much worse (Robb, 2010). Last year, 81% of security breaches occurred within the company. Employees can cause deliberate attacks, but it is more likely that employee use could compromise the system maliciously and unknowingly. Employees may abuse Internet access privileges by downloading pornography, downloading music, and pirating software. Obviously, this is a misuse of company time and resources but, more importantly, it can expose your company to fines from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and can also make your computer network more vulnerable to access of external troublemakers and sector spies. BSA has collected more than $70 million in fines from companies whose employees violated piracy laws. Some of the most common security issues affecting small business computers include viruses and hackers. Viruses can rewrite coding to make software programs unusable, as well as encode them and... half of paper... at the administrator level. In the end, upgrading your current system will save you money. Works CitedBSA. (n.d.). Enterprise Software Alliance. Retrieved from Business Software Alliance: www.bsa.org Dowling, P. J. (1998). Advertising and marketing on the web. Course Technology, Inc. Emory, V. (1997). How to grow your business on the Internet. Coriolis Group.Robb, D. (2010, March 28). Internal security breaches are more damaging. Retrieved from Datamation: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/secu/article.php/1405031Security Attacks. (n.d.). Retrieved from The Computer Technology Documentation Project: http://www.comptechdoc.org/independent/security/recommendations/secattacks.htmlTattrie, J. (2009, October 27). Security breaches cost companies thousands. Retrieved from Metronews.ca: http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/work/article/351179--security-breaches-cost-companies-thousands