Phishing, ransomware and crypto jacking are among the top cyber security threats. The industry continues to suffer from a severe shortage of cyber security professionals and experts warn that the stakes are higher than ever.
Cyber security encompasses everything which pertains to protect sensitive data, personally identifiable information, protected health information. Personal information, intellectual property, data and governmental and industry information systems from theft and damage attempted by cybercriminals.
Day by day, cyber security risk is increasing, driven by global connectivity and usage of cloud services, like AWS, to store sensitive data. Poor configuration of cloud services is nicely paired with increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals – the risk your organization would suffer from a successful cyber-attack is on the rise. Cyber-attacks have become quite common nowadays, it can come from any level of the organization. You should educate your staff about phishing and malware scams to steal intellectual property or personal data.
California was the first state to regulate data breaches disclosure in 2003, requiring individuals or enterprises to notify affected without reasonable delay and immediately the following discovery. Victims in cyber-attacks can sue for up to $750 and companies can be fined up to $7500 per victim. Twitter
Increased Cyber Security Threats
Information theft is one of the most expensive and fastest-growing segments in cybercrime. Mainly by the increasing exposure of identity information to the web via cloud networks and services. Industrials controls that manage power grids and other infrastructure can be disputed or destroyed. Cybercriminals’ main goal is not only identity theft but to compromise or destroy the data to generate distrust in organizations or government entities.
Social engineering is one of the easiest forms of cyber-attack as ransomware, phishing-spear phishing and spyware are the easiest forms of entering into any server or network. Your assets might be protected with 7 layers of cybersecurity but the third-party vendors who process your data have the poor cyber security practices – which makes vendor risk management and third-party risk management vulnerable.
As per the study done by Accenture and Ponemon Institute for The Ninth Annual Cost of Cybercrime Study, the average cost of cybercrime for an organization has increased by $1.4M over the last year to $13M, and the average number of data breaches rose by 11%.
“WE DISCOVERED IN OUR RESEARCH THAT INSIDER THREATS ARE NOT VIEWED AS SERIOUSLY AS EXTERNAL THREATS, LIKE A CYBERATTACK. BUT WHEN COMPANIES HAD AN INSIDER THREAT, IN GENERAL, THEY WERE MUCH MORE COSTLY THAN EXTERNAL INCIDENTS. THIS WAS LARGELY BECAUSE THE INSIDER THAT IS SMART HAS THE SKILLS TO HIDE THE CRIME, FOR MONTHS, FOR YEARS, SOMETIMES FOREVER.” — DR. LARRY PONEMON
The economic impact of Cyber Security Attack
Every year, cyber security problems and attacks cause billions of dollars of loss. For example, multiple high-profile Twitter accounts were compromised in July 2020, which was one of the most brazen cyber-attacks of recent times. Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Bill Gates were among the accounts which apparently had been hacked to promote a scam asking users to transfer Bitcoin in order to get twice the original amount back. According to Blockchair data quoted by the New York Times, Bitcoin worth $118,000 had been transferred to the dubious account.
It is crystal clear that cyber-attacks are moving at the speed of light. And beyond having an economic impact, they also have an impact in our day to day lives as our dependence on technology continues to grow. We should work together before the situation gets even worse.
Ref. https://www.varonis.com/blog/cybersecurity-statistics/
How to protect your organization against cybercrime?
Regardless of the size, all businesses or entities should ensure all of their employees understand cyber security threats and the mitigation procedure when some movement is happenings. It includes regular training and automates cyber awareness campaigns. Given the nature of cyberattacks – it is difficult to detect and understand the direct and indirect costs of the security breaches Twitter
Real-time information sharing, widespread collaboration in cyber security, regular report and review can be the ways to protect your organization against cybercrime.
