This is what organisations do to protect their own data and that of their clients against malicious attacks. The Internet is not always a safe space. Cyberattacks are on the rise and there is no indication that they will stop anytime soon.
Due to this increase, everyone is on high alert: consumers are more attentive to where their data is going; governments are implementing regulations to protect their populations; and organizations are dedicating more time, energy, and money to protecting their operations against cybercrime.
What is a cyberattack?
Before learning how organisations and individuals can protect themselves, let us start with what they are protecting themselves against. What is a cyberattack? It is simply any malicious attack on a computer system, network or device to gain access and information. There are many types of cyberattacks. Here are some of the most common:
- Malware refers to malicious software, including spyware, ransomware and viruses. It gains access to a network through a vulnerability, for example when a network member clicks on a fraudulent link or an email attachment. Once malware takes control of a system, it can demand payment in exchange for access to that system (ransomware), covertly transmit information from the network (spyware), or install additional harmful software on the network. In 2021, ransomware attacks alone increased by 105%.
- Phishing involves a malicious actor sending a fraudulent message that appears to come from a legitimate source, such as a bank or a company, or from someone with a wrong number. Phishing attacks occur via email, SMS or social networks. The objective is generally to steal information by installing malicious software or by tricking the victim into disclosing personal information.
- Man-in-the-middle attacks are incidents in which an attacker interposes themselves between two parties in a transaction to intercept personal information. These attacks are particularly common on public Wi-Fi networks, which can be easily compromised.
- Denial-of-service attacks flood systems with traffic to obstruct bandwidth so that they cannot respond to legitimate requests. The purpose of this type of attack is to disrupt systems.
- Password attacks are carried out by cybercriminals who attempt to steal passwords through guesswork or deception.
Individuals and businesses can protect themselves against cyberattacks in various ways, from passwords to physical locks on hard drives. Network security protects a wired or wireless computer network against intruders. Information security, such as the data protection measures of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, protects sensitive data against unauthorised access. There are many other types of cybersecurity, including antivirus software and firewalls. Cybersecurity is big business: a technology research and advisory firm estimates that companies will spend more than $188 billion on information security in 2023.
Despite the many measures organizations put in place to protect themselves, they often do not go far enough. Cybercriminals constantly evolve their methods to take advantage of changing consumption patterns and newly exposed vulnerabilities. When the world hastily shifted to remote work at the beginning of the pandemic, for example, cybercriminals exploited new software vulnerabilities to wreak havoc on IT systems.
What cybersecurity trends are projected over the next three to five years?
Cyber risk is not static and never disappears. It is only by adopting a dynamic, forward-looking attitude that organizations can keep track of the state of the situation and mitigate disruptions in the future. These three major cybersecurity trends may have the greatest implications for organizations:
1. On-demand access to ubiquitous data and information platforms is expanding.
2. Hackers use AI, machine learning, and other technologies to launch increasingly sophisticated attacks.
3. The growing regulatory landscape and persistent gaps in resources, knowledge and talent mean that organisations must continually evolve and adapt their approach to cybersecurity.
How can cybersecurity technologies and service providers help?
Cyberattacks are on track to cause $10.5 trillion in damages per year by 2025. This represents a 300% increase compared to 2015 levels. To protect against the onslaught, organizations worldwide spent approximately $150 billion on cybersecurity in 2021, and this figure is growing at 12.4% per year. But even that is likely not enough: threat volumes are expected to increase in the years ahead.
The gap between the current market and the total addressable market is enormous; only 10% of the security solutions market has currently been penetrated. The total opportunity is $1,500 to $2,000 billion. Given current trends, cybersecurity vendors can focus on four key areas:
- Cloud technologies. In the foreseeable future, migration to the cloud will continue to dominate the technology strategies of many organisations. Providers must therefore be able to protect both general and specialised cloud configurations.
- Pricing mechanisms. Most cyber attack solutions currently on the market are not designed for small and medium-sized enterprises. Cybersecurity vendors can capture this market by creating products tailored to it.
- Artificial intelligence. There is enormous potential for innovative AI and machine learning in the field of cybersecurity. However, operators struggle to trust intelligent and autonomous cyber defence platforms and products. Vendors should instead develop AI and machine learning products that make human analysts more effective.
- Managed services. Demand for full-service offerings is expected to grow by up to 10% per year over the next three years. Vendors must develop bundled offerings that include hot-button use cases. And they should focus on outcomes, not technology.
What is ransomware? What kind of damage can it cause?
Malicious software that manipulates a victim's data and holds it for ransom by encrypting it is known as ransomware. In recent years, it has reached a new level of sophistication and payment demands have reached tens of millions of dollars. The "smash and grab" operations of the past have transformed into a long game: hackers hide undetected in their victims' environments to find the most valuable information and data. And the situation is only expected to worsen: Cybersecurity Ventures, the market research firm and publisher of Cybercrime Magazine, estimates that the cost of ransomware could reach $265 billion by 2031. Here are some specific costs that businesses have had to face following ransomware attacks:
- Colonial Pipeline paid a ransom of $4.4 million after the company's shutdown.
- Global meat producer JBS paid 11 million dollars.
- Global insurance provider CNA Financial paid 40 million dollars.
- A ransomware attack against American software provider Kaseya targeted its remote IT management tool and put up to 2,000 companies worldwide at risk.
These figures do not include costs such as payments to third parties, for example, law firms, public relations, and negotiation firms. They also do not include opportunity costs related to executives and specialized teams being diverted from their daily roles for weeks or months to deal with an attack or the resulting revenue losses.
What can organisations do to mitigate future cyber threats?
Cybersecurity managers must consider the following capabilities, which must be tailored to the unique contexts of each organisation.
- Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA). In this security system design, all entities, both inside and outside the organisation's IT network, are not trusted by default and must prove their reliability. ZTA shifts the focus of cyber defence away from static perimeters around physical networks towards users, assets, and resources, thereby mitigating the risk associated with decentralised data.
- Behavioural analytics. These tools can monitor employee access requests or device health and identify abnormal user behaviour or device activity.
- Elastic log monitoring for large datasets. With advances in big data and the Internet of Things (IoT), datasets are larger than ever. The considerable volume of data that must be monitored makes it all the more difficult to track who accesses it. Elastic log monitoring enables organisations to extract log data from anywhere within the organisation to a single location, then search, analyse and visualise it in real time.
- Homomorphic encryption. This method allows users to work with encrypted data without first decrypting it, thereby giving third parties and other collaborators secure access to large datasets.
- Risk-based automation. As digitalisation levels increase, organisations can use automation to manage lower-risk and routine processes, freeing up other resources for higher-value activities.
- Defensive AI and machine learning for cybersecurity. Given that cyber attackers are adopting AI and machine learning, cybersecurity teams must evolve the same technologies. Organisations can use them to detect and remediate non-compliant security systems.
· Technical and organizational responses to ransomware. As the sophistication, frequency and range of ransomware increases, organizations must keep pace.
- Secure software development. Companies must integrate cybersecurity into software design from the outset. Security and technology risk teams must engage with developers at every stage of development. Security teams must also adopt more systematic approaches to problems, including agile and kanban methodologies.
- Infrastructure and security as code. Standardising and codifying infrastructure and control engineering processes can simplify the management of complex environments and increase system resilience.
- Software Bill of Materials. As compliance requirements increase, organisations can reduce the administrative burden by formally detailing all components and supply chain relationships used in software. This approach also helps ensure that security teams are prepared for regulatory requests.
How can cybersecurity talent help mitigate cyber risk?
Here are three steps to implement talent-to-value protection:
1. Identify the most important cybersecurity activities given the organization's needs, as well as the most urgent risks that must be mitigated. These can be determined through risk modeling and by ranking potential vulnerabilities according to the degree of risk they present.
2. Define the priority roles that reduce risk most effectively.
3. Create job descriptions for these priority roles and determine whether upskilling or hiring is the best way to fill each of them.
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