In the world of cybercrime, like in the physical world, the thief is often caught only after he makes off with the loot. With the advent of massive malware networks and ransomware groups, both internal teams and security providers often find themselves overwhelmed by the number and diversity of attacks. No single unit can detect all relevant threats and stop them before they damage valuable data or infrastructure.
New research shows that cyber security is taking center stage at many organizations. A pessimistic way of looking at this would be to acknowledge that things have gotten so bad with breaches, malware, and other incidents that enterprises have no choice but to focus on security.
Most companies neglect creation of comprehensive data security protocols for employees, allowing them to use unsafe or unsecured USB drives that could be compromised.
Ransomware attacks continue to focus on small and medium businesses (SMBs), according to a 2019 Datto survey. Companies are now more exposed than ever, and the trend shows an increase in attack frequency if organizations continue to shirk online security measures.
According to the most recent Notifiable Data Breaches Report published by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) data breaches rose considerable in the most recent quarterly reporting period.
Some say first impressions aren’t everything, and in many cases first impressions can be wrong. But they certainly are powerful, and bad first impressions can be difficult to overcome. This is true for friendships, dating, potential business partners, and more.
The majority of employees receive no social engineering awareness training, leaving them vulnerable to phishing and other types of social engineering tactics. Knowledgeable employees, research shows, are the first line of defense for a modern company.
While the early promises in the move to cloud computing promised to simplify cloud management and security, and in many ways these promises have been kept. However, in other ways, cloud environments have increased security complexity. In fact, according to a recent survey, 84% of security professionals report that their organizations struggle to maintain secure cloud configurations.
Companies should pay a lot more attention to insider threats when they establish a strategy to keep their data safe. It turns out that more than half of data breaches can be attributed to employee actions and not outside forces.
High-profile security breaches come every week, creating a guessing game of who will make the headlines next. Recent compromises include Equifax, Marriot, and British Airways, which just received the largest fine in GDPR history for the breach of its customer financial data.
Just like people, companies need to safeguard against online attacks, but the stakes are much higher. Corporate strategies vary, depending on the activity, but one thing is certain – they can’t pretend online threats are unimportant.
When computer users and businesses ask me for a single step they could take to dramatically enhance their security it's easy to answer: enable multi-factor authentication.
