Oct. 26, 2026
This piece is sponsored by Eide Bailly LLP.
For many business owners, a cyberattack feels like something that happens to large corporations or organizations with national visibility. But today’s cybercriminals aren’t targeting just household names. Increasingly, they’re looking for vulnerabilities wherever they can find them, regardless of company size, industry or location.
That reality became clear for Kara Peterson, vice president of operations and part owner of G&H Distributing, when a Friday morning phone call changed the course of her week and tested the resilience of her business.
A call no business owner wants to receive
G&H Distributing, a family-owned company based in Sioux Falls, had been exploring ways to modernize its business systems. The company recently had begun evaluating enterprise resource planning solutions and working with Brad Mendel and the technology consulting team at Eide Bailly to identify opportunities for growth and operational efficiency.
Then everything stopped.
Employees suddenly were locked out of critical systems. Files were encrypted. The company discovered it had become the victim of a ransomware attack. Essential business systems, including ERP-related servers and file servers, were inaccessible.
“We were dead in the water,” Peterson said. Fortunately, the company’s IT provider immediately began isolating the threat and following incident response procedures. But the business still faced an urgent question: What happens next?
The first 48 hours matter
When organizations think about cybersecurity, the focus often is on prevention. Firewalls, software updates and security tools all play critical roles. But as G&H learned firsthand, response planning can be just as important as prevention.
After learning about the attack, Peterson’s first call was to the company’s insurance carrier. That single decision triggered a coordinated response involving cyber specialists, forensic investigators and advisers who could help determine the scope of the incident and begin recovery efforts.
According to Mendel, this highlights one of the most overlooked elements of cybersecurity readiness: knowing who to call before a crisis occurs.
An incident response plan isn’t just a document. It’s a road map that allows leadership teams to act quickly when every minute matters. Knowing who owns each decision, who needs to be contacted and how teams will engage can dramatically reduce confusion and downtime.
Why small businesses are not immune
One misconception many organizations hold is that they’re too small to become targets.
However, today’s ransomware attacks often are opportunistic rather than targeted.
Mendel explained that many threat actors use automated tools and bots to continuously search for vulnerabilities across networks, websites and firewalls. Once they identify an opening, they exploit it, lock down systems and only then determine the size and profile of the organization they’ve compromised.
In G&H’s case, forensic investigators ultimately determined the attack stemmed from a known firewall vulnerability that recently had been identified and was being exploited by threat actors across the country.
The lesson is clear: Cybersecurity risk is no longer reserved for large enterprises. Every organization connected to the internet is a potential target.
Technology alone isn’t enough
“No technology stack is perfect,” Mendel said. Organizations can’t buy enough software to eliminate cyber risk entirely. Instead, resilience comes from layers of protection working together.
That layered approach includes:
Timely patching and updates
Network monitoring
Secure backups
Endpoint protection
Employee awareness training
Incident response planning
Managed security and IT support
When combined, these measures help reduce risk and improve an organization’s ability to recover when attacks occur.
The importance of trusted advisers
While technology played an important role in G&H’s recovery, Peterson repeatedly returned to another factor: relationships.
During the crisis, she leaned on long-established relationships with her insurance provider, banking partners and Eide Bailly advisers. Those trusted connections accelerated decision-making and provided confidence during an uncertain situation.
Because Eide Bailly already understood G&H’s business, systems and goals, the team could step in quickly to help evaluate options and support recovery efforts.
“There was never a question of who I was going to call,” Peterson explained. Those relationships had been built long before the incident occurred.
Building a more resilient future
Although the ransomware attack temporarily disrupted operations, G&H emerged stronger.
The company experienced approximately one week of significant downtime before restoring operations and continued evaluating improvements to its technology environment. Following the incident, G&H moved forward with Eide Bailly’s managed IT services while continuing implementation of its new ERP platform. Business owners cannot be expected to track every cybersecurity vulnerability, technology trend or threat actor tactic. But they can surround themselves with advisers who do.
As cyber threats continue to evolve, the organizations best positioned to respond won’t necessarily be those with the largest technology budgets. They’ll be the ones that have built the right team, created a response plan and established the partnerships needed to navigate the first 48 hours when they matter most.
For Peterson, the experience reinforced the value of investing in expertise and staying ahead of emerging risks.
Listen to the full story here.
window.fbAsyncInit = function() {
FB.init({
appId : ‘1998209520463006’,
xfbml : true,
version : ‘v2.10’
});
FB.AppEvents.logPageView();
};
(function(d, s, id){
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = “https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));
——————————————————-
Click Here For The Original Source.
