As of 2017, a single cyber incident can put a small company out of business, according to new research by Ponemon Institute. The findings confirm Bitdefender’s predictions for 2017 that targeted attacks would increase due to poor security of corporate networks.
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.
Although insider leaks and attacks continue to multiply, recent research found 58 percent of IT operations and security managers believe their organizations unnecessarily grant access to individuals beyond their roles, with 91 percent predicting the risk of insider threats will grow or stay the same.
Passwords are a perennial problem.
We rely so much on them to secure our company systems, our secrets, our customers’ private information… and yet we typically leave it in the hands of our users to choose their passwords safely.
The internet is a far stranger place than the average user gets to experience. It’s used not only for everyday activities such as looking up recipes and updating Facebook statuses, but also for activities that might land users in jail.
Despite obvious supply chain differences between organizations in different industries, IT architects should consider their generic similarities when integrating various solutions. Quite often, the complexity of the supply chain depends on the entities working together – manufacturers, logistic providers, repackages, retail stores – meaning that security and infrastructures become complex and cumbersome to manage.
It’s tough enough for large global enterprises to build a strong security program. Small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) have their own unique set of challenges, the biggest of which might be a lack of financial and professional resources to deploy and maintain the latest technologies.
With cybercriminals making millions – if not billions – of dollars from ransom requests, companies have also been targets of opportunity. While file encrypting ransomware such as CryptoWall have been known to cause financial losses topping $18 million, variants that encrypt the NTFS MFT (Master File Table) – Petya for instance – have been raising concern, as recovery from it involves complete endpoint downtime and significant IT challenges.
SMBs growth by far surpasses enterprise growth, last year reaching a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32% when large enterprises explored opportunities to split. Consequently, entrepreneurs have realized that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to build businesses, and that technologies can be easily incorporated.
The healthcare industry is under fire these days. Hospitals are falling victim to a cyber-epidemic that is paralyzing their systems and asking for huge ransoms in return.
