What is Cybersecurity?

 Cybersecurity is vital because it protects all categories of knowledge from theft and damage. This includes sensitive data, personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), personal information, property , data, and governmental and industry information systems.

Without a cybersecurity program, your organization cannot defend itself against data breach campaigns, making it an irresistible target for cybercriminals.

Both inherent risk and residual risk is increasing, driven by global connectivity and usage of cloud services, like Amazon Web Services, to store sensitive data and private information. Widespread poor configuration of cloud services paired with increasingly sophisticated cyber criminals means the danger that your organization suffers from a successful cyber attack or data breach is on the increase .

Business leaders can not solely believe out-of-the-box cybersecurity solutions like antivirus software and firewalls, cybercriminals are getting smarter and their tactics are becoming more resilient to standard cyber defences.

Cyber threats can come from any level of your organization. you want to educate your staff about simple social engineering scams like phishing and more sophisticated cybersecurity attacks like ransomware attacks (think WannaCry) or other malware designed to steal property or personal data.

GDPR and other laws mean that cybersecurity is not any longer something businesses of any size can ignore. Security incidents regularly affect businesses of all sizes and sometimes make the front page causing irreversible reputational damage to the businesses involved.

To help you understand the importance of cyber security, we've compiled a post explaining the various elements of cybercrime you'll not remember of.

If you are not yet worried about cybersecurity, you ought to be.

What is Cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is that the state or process of protecting and recovering computer systems, networks, devices, and programs from any sort of cyber attack. Cyber attacks are an increasingly sophisticated and evolving danger to your sensitive data, as attackers employ new methods powered by social engineering and AI to bypass traditional security controls.

The fact of the matter is that the world is increasingly reliant on technology and this reliance will continue as we introduce subsequent generation of smart Internet-enabled devices that have access to our networks via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

Read our full guide cybersecurity here.

The Importance of Cybersecurity

Cyber Insurance In India is on the increase . Fundamentally, our society is more technologically reliant than ever before and there's no sign that this trend will slow. Data leaks that would end in fraud are now publicly posted on social media accounts. Sensitive information like Social Security numbers, mastercard information and checking account details are now stored in cloud storage services like Dropbox or Google Drive.

The fact of the matter is whether or not you're a private , small business or large multinational, you believe computer systems a day . Pair this with the increase in cloud services, poor cloud service security, smartphones and therefore the Internet of Things (IoT) and that we have a myriad of cybersecurity threats that did not exist a couple of decades ago. we'd like to know the difference between cybersecurity and knowledge security, albeit the skillsets are getting more similar.

Governments round the world are bringing more attention to cybercrimes. GDPR may be a great example. it's increased the reputational damage of knowledge breaches by forcing all organizations that operate within the EU to:

Communicate data breaches

Appoint a data-protection officer

Require user consent to process information

Anonymize data for privacy

The trend towards public disclosure isn't limited to Europe. While there are not any national laws overseeing data breach disclosure within the us , there are data breach laws altogether 50 states. Commonalities include:

The requirement to notify those affect as soon as possible

Let the govt know as soon as possible

Pay some kind of fine

California was the primary state to manage data breach disclosures in 2003, requiring persons or businesses to notify those affected "without reasonable delay" and "immediately following discovery". Victims can sue for up to $750 and corporations are often fined up to $7,500 per victim.

This has driven standards boards just like the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to release frameworks to assist organizations understand their security risks, improve cybersecurity measures and stop cyber attacks.

Why is Cybercrime Increasing?

Information theft is that the costliest and fastest growing segment of cybercrime. Largely driven by the increasing exposure of identity information to the online via cloud services. But it's not the sole target. Industrial controls that manage power grids and other infrastructure are often disrupted or destroyed. And fraud is not the only goal, cyber attacks may aim to compromise data integrity (destroy or change data) to breed distrust in a corporation or government.

Cybercriminals are getting more sophisticated, changing what they aim , how they affect organizations and their methods of attack for various security systems.

Social engineering remains the simplest sort of cyber attack with ransomware, phishing, and spyware being the simplest sort of entry. Third-party and fourth-party vendors who process your data and have poor cybersecurity practices are another common attack vector, making vendor risk management and third-party risk management all the more important.

According to the Ninth Annual Cost of Cybercrime Study from Accenture and therefore the Ponemon Institute, the typical cost of cybercrime for a corporation has increased by $1.4 million over the last year to $13.0 million and therefore the average number of knowledge breaches rose by 11 percent to 145. Information risk management has never been more important.

Data breaches can involve financial information like mastercard numbers or checking account details, protected health information (PHI), personally identifiable information (PII), trade secrets, property and other targets of commercial espionage. Other terms for data breaches include unintentional information disclosure, data leak, cloud leak, information leakage or a knowledge spill.

Other factors driving the expansion in cybercrime include:

The distributed nature of the web

The ability for cybercriminals to attack targets outside their jurisdiction making policing extremely difficult

Increasing profitability and simple commerce on the dark web

The proliferation of mobile devices and therefore the Internet of Things.

What is the Impact of Cybercrime?

A lack of specialise in cybersecurity can damage your business in range of the way including:

Economic costs

‍Theft of property , corporate information, disruption in trading and therefore the cost of repairing damaged systems

Reputational cost

‍Loss of consumer trust, loss of current and future customers to competitors and poor media coverage

Regulatory costs

‍GDPR and other data breach laws mean that your organization could suffer from regulatory fines or sanctions as a results of cybercrimes

All businesses, no matter the dimensions , must ensure all staff understand cybersecurity threats and the way to mitigate them. this could include regular training and a framework to figure with thereto aims to scale back the danger of knowledge leaks or data breaches.

Given the character of cybercrime and the way difficult it are often to detect, it's difficult to know the direct and indirect costs of the many security breaches. this does not mean the reputational damage of even alittle data breach or other security event isn't large. If anything, consumers expect increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity measures as time goes on.

How to Protect your Organization Against Cybercrime

There are three simple steps you'll take you increase security and reduce risk of cybercrime:

Educate staff

Human error was the explanation for 90% of knowledge breaches in 2019. This concerning statistic, however, features a bright side . If staff are taught the way to identify and properly resond to cyber threats, the bulk of knowledge breach incidents might be avoided. Such educational programs could also increase the worth of all cybersecurity solution investments because it might prevent staff from unknowingly bypassing expensive security controls to facilitate cybercrime.

The following resources are often used for cyber threat awareness training within the workplace:

What is a cyber threat?

What is a knowledge breach?

What is social engineering?

What are phishing attacks?

What is clickjacking?

What is typosquatting?

What is a DDoS attack?

What is Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS)?

Protect your sensitive data

Invest in tools that limit information loss, monitor your third-party risk and fourth-party vendor risk and continuously scan for data exposure and leaked credentials. Data leaks, if left unattended, could help cybercriminals gain access internal networks and breach sensitive resources. it is vital to implement a knowledge leak discovery solution capable of also monitoring leaks throughout the third-party network.

Almost60% of knowledge breaches occur via compromised third parties, so by shutting down vendor data leaks, the bulk of knowledge breach incidents are often avoided.

Implement a Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) solution

Use technology to scale back costs like automatically sending out vendor assessment questionnaires as a part of an overall cyber security risk assessment strategy

Companies should not be asking why is cybersecurity important, but how am i able to ensure my organization's cybersecurity practices are sufficient to suits GDPR and other regulation and to guard my business against sophisticated cyber attacks.

Examples of Damages to Companies suffering from Cyber Attacks and Data Breaches

The amount of cyber attacks and data breaches within the recent years is staggering and it is easy to supply a laundry list of companies who are household names that are affected.

Here's a couple of examples:

Equifax

‍The Equifax cybercrime fraud event affected approximately 145.5 million U.S. consumers along side 400,000-44 million British residents and 19,000 Canadian residents. Equifax shares dropped 13% in early trading the day after the breach and various lawsuits were filed against Equifax as a results of the breach. to not mention the reputational damage that Equifax suffered. On July 22 2019, Equifax agreed to a settlement with the FTC including a $300 million fund for victim compensation, $175m for states and territories within the agreement and $100 million in fines.

‍Between February and March 2014, eBay was the victim of a breach of encrypted passwords, which resulted in asking all of its 145 million users to reset their password. Attackers used alittle set of employee credentials to access this trove of user data. The stolen information included encrypted passwords and other personal information, including names, e-mail addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth. The breach was disclosed in May 2014, after a month-long investigation by eBay.

Adult Friend Finder

‍In October 2016, hackers collected 20 years of knowledge on six databases that included names, email addresses and passwords for The FriendFinder Network. The FriendFinder Network includes websites like Adult Friend Finder, Penthouse.com, Cams.com, iCams.com and Stripshow.com. Most of the passwords were protected only by the weak SHA-1 hashing algorithm, which meant that 99% of them had been cracked by the time LeakedSource.com published its analysis of the whole data assail November 14.

Yahoo

‍Yahoo disclosed that a breach in August 2013 by a gaggle of hackers had compromised 1 billion accounts. during this instance, security questions and answers were also compromised, increasing the danger of fraud . The breach was first reported by Yahoo on December 14, 2016, and made all affected users to vary passwords, and to reenter any unencrypted security questions and answers to form them encrypted within the future. However, by October of 2017, Yahoo changed the estimate to three billion user accounts. An investigation revealed that users' passwords in clear text, payment card data and bank information weren't stolen. Nonetheless, this remains one among the most important data breaches of this sort in history.

While these are a couple of samples of status data breaches, it is vital to recollect that there are even more that never made it to the front page.