5 Reasons Why Sustainable Cybersecurity Is More Business-Critical Than Ever Before
Every business worth its salt today knows that cybersecurity is an important issue. Companies are more connected than ever before, and they rely more intensely on their digital assets than they did even five years ago.
However, with the explosion in the digital economy has come ever-greater security risks. Cybersecurity is becoming less sustainable. Hackers, both private and state-backed, threaten companies across the board and can cause tremendous disruption. Even small players, such as kids in dorm rooms, can cause millions of dollars worth of losses if they get a lucky break. State-sponsored attacks can bring down entire power grids and Fortune 500 enterprises.
Cybersecurity, therefore, is becoming more business-critical. Criminals are becoming more brazen in their attacks, and the losses are potentially higher than they ever were before.
In this post, we take a look at some of the reasons why implementing sustainable cybersecurity is more business-critical than ever before. In this post, you’ll learn why it matters and, hopefully, why you should take action right now to bolster your defenses.
Cyberattacks Affect Everyone
If you think that hackers only go after big business, you’re sadly mistaken. While high-profile brands have come under attack in the past, they’re not the only target. In fact, criminals attempt to compromise security at small businesses far more often, mainly because they are softer targets.
Don’t fall into the trap of believing that you have nothing to offer hackers. Even though you run a small business, there is still value in your data, and accessing your network. If hackers can get user names, passwords, credit card details, or mission-critical data, they can easily profit from their attacks.
Small businesses face around 4,000 hacks every day. The most common demand is ransom payments for the release of data. Companies wind up forking out hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps even millions, to get their money back.
Even if your company isn’t attacked, you can still suffer the fallout. A digital attack on a nuclear power plant, for instance, could lead to a level of devastation that forces you to shut down operations for a time. In this scenario, it’s not just the loss of money that’s the problem, but the loss of life as well.
Rapid Changes In Technology Are Leading To More Hacking Opportunities
The pace of digital change accelerated dramatically after 2010. Cloud computing and smartphones combined to produce a digital landscape that both firms and consumers enjoy today.
However, this pace of development was a nightmare for cyber security companies . By 2009, they were just about getting to grips with protecting conventional operating systems from cyberattacks. However, after mass cloud computing, that all changed. New integrated technologies meant new vulnerabilities for hackers to exploit, and that’s exactly what happened.
For instance, cloud computing grew by around 50 percent per year after 2012. During the build-out phase, hackers exploited a vast array of vulnerabilities and brought many companies to their knees. New frontiers now include IoT, which is yet to have a fully-fleshed out security architecture, and AI. Hackers are even developing machine learning tools that make it easier for them to identify and exploit weaknesses in company defenses.
The Damage To Business Is Enormous
Hackers are causing tremendous damage to businesses and organizations across the world. Furthermore, it’s not just the direct cost of the attack, either, that’s the problem. That’s often manageable. Instead, it’s the brand reputation and the massive fines that governments impose on firms that fail to protect their data. It’s one of the few examples where the victim of a crime gets punished.
Big companies across the globe have fallen foul of hacks. Facebook, for instance, saw more than 540 million customer records exposed because of a data breach on AWS. Equifax also lost 147 million customer records to hackers, costing the firm an estimated $439 million. Even the NHS in the UK was brought to its knees by hackers by an attack that resulted in the loss of patient records and difficulties in cleaning up afterward.
Failed Cybersecurity Policy Is Leading To Increasing Regulations
Governments aren’t happy about the fact that companies are falling foul of hackers and are actively looking to punish those that do. From the standpoint of the authorities, it is the responsibility of firms to protect themselves and their customers against malicious entities, not the other way around.
While these laws are unfair, they are likely coming, if they are not already here. Already there are laws that allow both consumers and governments themselves to litigate against firms that fail to adequately protect data. In the future, the laws are likely to become more draconian and firms are going to have to step up their cybersecurity efforts, whether or not they have the resources to do so.
Cybercrime Damages Personal Privacy
Even though governments reserve the right to scrutinize your personal finances and install cameras that watch you wherever you go, they have different standards for private enterprise. Companies must protect personal privacy at all costs, or face fines.
In today’s cybersecurity environment, that’s a problem. There are so many different types of potential attacks, including worms, phishing, viruses and malware. In some cases, simply fraud is sufficient to compromise a network. Better passwords won’t cut it.
As such, personal data loss is a major issue. Yahoo, for instance, lost three billion customer accounts to hackers in a 2013 breach, an event that nearly wiped out the company and left Google unchallenged.
What’s more, around one in fifteen people globally fall foul of cybercrime every year, meaning that if you’ve escaped it so far, you’re one of the lucky ones. Identity fraud is a major issue.
Unfortunately, rates of cybercrime are increasing. Around 70 percent of business leaders believe that their organizations are vulnerable to an attack . Only a small percentage said that they had systems in place to defend themselves from the full array of potential attacks out there.
Therefore, companies like yours need to act now to make network protection sustainable. If you can’t afford to bring cybersecurity in-house, outsource your networks and make them someone else’s responsibility.
