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Cybercrime in Texas: Small Businesses Get a Clear Playbook at IACCGH Session

By Somdatta Basu

SUGAR LAND, TX — Nov. 18, 2025. The IACCGH Small Business Series drew a full room to Elite Restaurant for a timely briefing on cyber risk—one shaped as much by a recent scare as by expert guidance. Co-sponsored by Wallis Bank and CenterPoint Energy, the program featured Rashmi Sheel, President of CMIT Solutions of Sugar Land, who urged owners to move from a narrow focus on “security tools” to a broader culture of cyber resilience.

The invitation was born of experience. After an internal review flagged irregularities, IACCGH asked Sheel to examine its email environment. She found a second, unauthorized administrator lodged inside Outlook—able to read mail and act as staff. The system was secured, but the episode became a cautionary tale. “Many of us assume a good web or IT vendor equals cybersecurity,” Jagdip Ahluwalia, IACCGH Founding Secretary and Executive Director noted. “Rashmi showed why that confidence can be misplaced,” he added.

Sheel opened with a definition: security protects; resilience protects, endures, and recovers. “Protection matters,” she said, “but continuity keeps you in business the day after something goes wrong.” She outlined the threats most likely to trip smaller firms: business email compromise, session-token hijacking (malicious extensions or cookies lifting a live login), MFA fatigue and SIM-swap scams, and vendor-origin breaches that ripple across supply chains.

Her prescription was practical and layered. Use password manager and unique credentials; enforce multifactor authentication; tighten user privileges; segment the network; monitor for unusual changes; and train staff routinely. A simple habit—pasting suspicious links into VirusTotal before clicking—can prevent an incident. “Small doesn’t mean invisible,” Sheel said. “It often means easier to hit.”

She also connected controls to commerce. Card-accepting merchants face PCI responsibilities; cyber-insurance policies increasingly require documented safeguards; and enterprise customers are asking for proof of readiness. “Good controls lower risk and build trust,” she said. “They’re now part of how you sell.”

Policy developments gave the audience added reason to act. Sheel highlighted Texas’s new Safe Harbor law, effective Sept. 1, 2025, which offers legal protection from certain penalties when a business adopts and maintains a recognized cybersecurity framework. “It’s the difference between demonstrating you followed the rules and appearing reckless,” she said, sharing a checklist and e-book for implementation.

The Q&A turned the briefing into a clinic. Frequent travelers asked how to handle authentication abroad; Sheel advised enrolling multiple MFA methods (authenticator app, backup email, secondary number), avoiding public Wi-Fi without a VPN, and carrying a power bank instead of using public charging stations. On payment risk, she recommended RFID-blocking wallets for debit cards and a strict callback policy before honoring emailed banking changes. Asked about

vendor exposure, she revisited the well-known Target breach — entered through a third-party contractor — to argue for least-privilege access and network segmentation “in every office, no matter the size.”

Throughout, Sheel returned to culture as the differentiator: short weekly huddles on phishing tells, a written incident-response plan, and system logs that prove controls are in place. “Resilience is planned,” she said. “When you’ve rehearsed the storm, you bend — you don’t break.”

Jagdip closed by thanking co-sponsors Wallis Bank and CenterPoint Energy, partner organizations, media supporters, and Elite Restaurant for hosting. Attendees were invited to continue the conversation with Sheel for assessments and training resources.

The takeaway for audience was straightforward: cyber threats are persistent, but preparation scales. With the right framework, documentation, and habits, small businesses can protect data, satisfy customers and insurers, and turn security from a cost center into a mark of professionalism. As Sheel put it, “Readiness isn’t extra — it’s part of your brand.”

Pic Credit: Bijay Dixit