Cybersecurity: The Foundation to Building Secure Enterprises
The internet has become a major and influential part of our daily lives and is an integral way for global communication. It is used to stay in touch with people across the world and operate businesses and store personal and confidential information such as bank account details. With a lot of data transferred across networks, there is always a risk of exploiting and becoming vulnerable to cyberattacks. Hence, Cybersecurity becomes of utmost importance for every organization.
What is Cybersecurity?
Data breaches have affected organizations of every scale. The top executives in the companies, such as business owners, CEOs, and CIOs, are always the target of security breaches. Cyberattacks can damage an organization’s credibility and lead to financial as well as productivity losses.
Cybersecurity becomes essential for safeguarding organizations against these data breaches. It is all about protecting networks and systems against malicious cyberattacks. The ultimate aim of these attacks is to access, alter, and destroy sensitive information and money extortion.
An effective Cybersecurity approach should include protecting all the networks, computers, programs, and user data.
How to Determine the Cybersecurity Needs of Your Business?
Cybersecurity should be taken seriously; too many companies overlook the financial and reputational risks involved. Everyone in your company should be aware of the high consequences threat actors may have if they break into your system, such as leaking sensitive information such as personal details about customers.
Hackers can hold your business hostage by encrypting your data, effectively operating as a ransom. Employees may not even have a space to work if hackers vandalize or shut down all computers and networks.
Steps to Assess the Level of Cybersecurity Needed
1. Define the amount of risk your business will face if the security of your data is compromised.
2. Take VA/PT assessments to check your current level of safety against ransomware.
3. Define the main objective to secure the healthcare of your Cyber system and data.
4. Seek professional advice from a service provider on the proper level of security as per your needs.
Cost of Cyber Attacks vs. Cost of Cybersecurity
As the famous quote says that “It is better to be safe than sorry”. This quote works completely in this situation; in cybersecurity, the cost of a new solution or service can be a fraction of the actual loss that a corporation suffers after a cyber attack.
To provide evidence following are the incidents that took place due to a lack of cybersecurity:
- Consider Volunteer Voyages, a one-person small firm that lost $14,000 in fraudulent charges when an internet hacker stole its debit card information, which the bank refused to pay.
- DoorDash, a popular online food delivery startup recently had a major data leak, with hackers having accessed private user data for over 4.9 million customers, resulting in thousands in expenses.
- You wouldn’t think that Amazon would be hit by DDoS attacks when the site is among the most significant online today. But in 2015, Amazon went offline for over an hour when a denial-of-service(DDoS) attack actually took them out for about $75 million in losses.
A recent survey by McKinsey revealed that 75 % of experts consider cybersecurity to be a top priority. Now in comparison, let’s see how other losses would have been prevented if some security had been present:
- Adobe had 750,000 records exposed. In this incident, anyone with a web browser could access the leaked information, including account creation dates, Adobe products used, and emails.
- From the data, it’s clear that about 28% of breaches include malware, which would mean an average of $71 billion could be saved if an effective antivirus solution were in place.
On average, companies go through about 6–14% of their annual IT budget on cybersecurity. That’s less than a quarter of the total amount allocated towards cybersecurity in general, which is quite feasible. A study conducted towards the end of 2018 concluded that most firms reimburse 10% of their cybersecurity IT spending.
Investing in a Strong SOC
- A SOC (Security Operations Center) is a unit of trained professionals whose goal is to monitor, identify and respond to cyber attacks as they occur.
- For organizations that face an increased risk of either their brand or customer data being compromised by an outside threat, building a SOC can both protect them from further loss and prevent a potential disaster from occurring before it has a chance to run its course.
- Another option is to enlist the services of a managed security service provider (MSS P) who maintains ownership and responsibility for monitoring your security framework and responding to incidents. This can be a great option for smaller organizations that want to focus their investments on their business. They will benefit from no longer needing to pay people’s salaries, benefits, overtime pay, and so forth — tasks that aren’t directly related to their core competencies.
But, How to Increase ROI on Cybersecurity Investments?
The Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and experts from the cybercrime domain confirm that most of these attacks are automated. They tend not to be targeted as much. They might be ‘opportunistic’ attacks wherein your usernames and passwords are what the attackers tend to use over and over again to attempt a breach of a system.
A growing number of ransomware attacks can be clearly explained by hackers who tend to exploit a data breach before launching a ransomware attack wherein your usernames and passwords become forthcoming. Once they know this, it’s a piece of cake for them to break into systems.
For this reason, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and CISOs of firms need to focus their cybersecurity investment on initiatives that could potentially increase the efforts of such attackers. They can pursue an attack, thereby increasing the amount of computational power involved in the pursuit of such an effort.
Firms can maximize their ROI on cybersecurity by the following steps:
1 . Look out for hazardous active threats: Organizations need to check again after the automated threat detection with robust firewall services. Different threats are like-
2. Malwareware and blackmail: Operations that require big losses to gain more value generally target organizations using vulnerable software products. These vulnerabilities are maximized in devastating earnings before being exploited by potential extortion of the organization’s assets to restore systems.
3. Third-party losses: These are the payroll claims against a business for damage caused by a third party. The costs may exceed the organization’s insurance policy and include numerous cases from other businesses in the same area.
4. Invasion of privacy: Theft of digital assets from computers or servers with the purpose of jeopardizing privacy or obtaining private data.
Conclusion:
With the rise of smart technology, from smart container ships to smart homes and security cameras, trends in cyber security adapt to changing needs as new risks emerge in today’s tech-rich society.
Consumer chat apps like WhatsApp are practically crawling with spammers, scammers, and hackers. Yet businesses still use these platforms to share sensitive internal business data every single day. The public is now taking cyber vulnerabilities more seriously. More and more people taking interest in understanding how companies are trying to safeguard their sensitive information. Cyber security is becoming more and more important, and criminals are constantly looking for new ways to breach information. As a result, future professionals must be aware, adaptable, proactive, and innovative in their response to threats.
The future is bright for the cybersecurity industry, as companies will continue to develop new technologies to guard against the ever-evolving threat landscape. Government rules, regulations, and security procedures will also continue to evolve to keep up with emerging technologies and the rapid number of threats across both private and public sectors.
