Cyber in every fiber – Impacts and Industry thoughts
Welcome to our first Cyber blog, This will be one in a sries so do check back for more over the upcoming weeks.
Cyber security is one of the most talked about technology solutions over the past few years, especially after the spread of Ransomware attacks in 2016 and 2017.
However, I feel things like GDPR have taken away from this subject this year, so this is my attempt to bring you up to speed on the impact of Cyber Attacks.
Firstly, what is the impact of a Cyber-attack on your business. The obvious one that jumps out at you is the cost of an attack especially in Ransomware attacks. That is not something to be sniffed at, in general these attacks cost businesses millions every year and this happens all over the globe, no one is safe.
The second issue you may come across you is the impact on your clients knowing they have had their details possibly stolen and sold on to some other individuals that possibly intend to cause them personal financial damage. This of course can lose your business valuable reputation that will take a long time to repair.
So, what has business identified as the reasons that these attacks keep happening especially since we would not accept it from any other part of the business. Remember, Ransomware attacks alone increased 90% from 2015 to 2016 and we do not see this slowing down any time soon.
According to the Cybersecurity Trends Spotlight Report (2017)
Some of the largest obstacles faced include lack of skilled workers and low budgets
Priorities include improved threat detection, better analytics, and threat blocking
Concern over cloud computing, in areas such as data loss and data privacy, remains high
There are increasing concerns around Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives, including data leakage or loss and the downloading of unsafe applications or content
ISACA is an international association with a focus on IT governance that conducted a survey of IT professionals from various parts of the globe.
They were asked to answer questions on organizational security and preparedness against cyber-attacks.
Key findings:
Attack methodologies are becoming more sophisticated while the number of data breaches continues to go unchecked
Respondents don’t expect attacks to slow and anticipate being prey to an attack in the next year
Cybercriminals continue to use social engineering as a means to carry out attacks
The escalation of attacks is forcing businesses to take action and increase budgets, but it’s often difficult to fill security positions with skilled workers
From what we see above, the common consensious across the board is that we need to take this more seriously. training of staff is very important although that investment is not enough as the attacker gets more sophisticated at every attack. If you remember that the attackers need to be lucky once we need to be lucky everytime.
Like always if something that we spoke about here you would likje to discuss further just reach out to me directly - john@stability.ie and I would be happy to help you further.
Next time we will discuss the prevention of attacks.