Every day, our clients are asking us questions about cybersecurity. Many questions lately are focused around the same theme – Why the urgency? Why are the solutions that worked before not enough?
We understand the confusion. But the answer is relatively simple – the technology landscape has changed dramatically in the last 3 years. The follow-up question (what has changed?) is equally simple – everything.
Let’s break this down.
- The technology – As our usage of technology has exploded, the surface area of risk has expanded exponentially. Billions of devices are online and everything online has value to a hacker.
- The methods – Cyber-attacks are heavily automated and streamlined across thousands or even millions of targets at a time. Specific, targeted attacks are still a threat, but the vast majority of attacks are launched persistently at the masses every day.
- The incentives – Ransomware represents the clearest example of this to date. Hackers often don’t care what data you have, but it’s easy to assume you likely need it for your business and would be willing to pay to get it back.
- The players – Anyone from nation-state hackers to bored amateur youths in small Eurasian countries all have a strong financial incentive to steal your data and cause you pain.
- Bonus incentives – If you’ve been breached in the past, you are at higher risk for repeat targeting
What response is appropriate?
If you understand even a small portion of the problem/question discussed above, there is a simple answer here. It’s time to respond. If you take something away from reading this, please act now. Start taking actions to increase the cyber security of your organization. Ask your internal resources about your exposure and get their ideas on improving your defenses and ability to respond. Bring your technology partners to the table to help you close the gaps where you don’t have the answers.
If you haven’t worried about cyber security in the last year, then you are living in denial. The challenges are real, but so are the responses to address them. Get to work.
