The #WannaCry ransomware attack has reached over a quarter of a million computers across over 100 countries. Looking at the “heat map” of attacks it’s obvious that some countries have fared worse than others.
Cryptographic keys and digital certificates used to uniquely identify machines or applications are vital to businesses that want to guarantee the integrity of in-transit data. However, even businesses with mature DevOps practices sometimes fail to follow practices designed to secure the use and storage of cryptographic keys and digital certificates.
More than 1.4 billion data records are estimated to have been compromised in 2016 as a direct result of data breaches, spawning an 86 percent increase compared to 2015, according to a Gemalto’s Breach Level Index. With organizations continuously being targeted by cybercriminals either with sophisticated advanced threats or through infrastructure vulnerabilities, the main driver behind these attacks is often related to financial gains or gratification.
People often complain about how the government spends money inefficiently—and in many cases these criticisms are justified. And when it comes to spending on cyber security solutions, there’s plenty of room for improvement, according to a recent study.
It’s absolutely true that, more often than not, security is a barrier to getting things done. Whether it’s a forgotten password, waiting for resources to be provisioned, or a risk-based decision that requires a new initiative to be delayed because potential risks are too high without some additional mitigation. However, when approached correctly and with some forethought, it doesn’t have to be this way.
As enterprises increasingly embrace cloud computing and cloud services, they must also adjust their cybersecurity spending to reflect the new reality of how they’re using (or not using) their data centers and business-technology systems. The fact that there is a shift in security spending because of so-called digital transformation efforts was made clear in the recently released Global State of Information Security Survey (GSISS) 2017 -- a worldwide study conducted by PwC, as well as CIO and CSO magazines.
Attacks on cloud systems and infrastructure are costly. Consider the recent massive distributed denial of service attack aimed at the Internet infrastructure company Dyn. The attack dragged down Amazon, Netflix, Reddit, Spotify, Tumblr, Twitter and others. The network congestion was largely made possible by compromised IoT devices including video cameras and digital video recorders.
Companies will invest more in security solutions, driving overall Enterprise Security market growth.
With cybercrime shifting from user-targeted attacks to organization-targeted attacks, it stands to reason that the sophistication of their tools and malicious code has also increased. Employing advanced evasion and persistence techniques to infiltrate and compromise an organization, their goal has remained constant: to make money.
With the worldwide security market reaching $22.1 billion in 2015 in terms of revenue, Garner estimates that it increased by 3.7 percent as compared to 2014. While the figures for 2016 are yet to surface, it’s safe to estimate these numbers will surely rise, especially in light of recent cyberattacks and global security awareness.
The proliferation of IoT devices for both consumers and business has opened up a new market that’s estimated to reach a whopping $661.74 billion by 2021, from $157.05 billion in 2016. Considering the obvious business opportunities, security researchers have expressed concerns regarding the security mechanisms – or lack of – bundled with “smart things”.
