Page 31 - Cyber Defense eMagazine - November 2017
P. 31

DOES YOUR COMPANY HAVE ADEQUATE SECURITY

               PROGRAMS IN THE ERA OF CYBER ATTACKS?



               MANY COMPANIES HAVE A FALSE SENSE OF CONFIDENCE ABOUT THEIR
               CYBER SECURITY CAPABILITIES


               by Doug Ramos, Security Practice Manager, Groupware Technology
               Facing ever-evolving malware, vulnerabilities and hacking attempts, companies today need to
               seriously look at and evaluate their cyber security policies.

               Studies show a vast number of businesses of all kinds seem to be woefully unprepared to deal
               with  cyber  threats.  Some  companies  that  have  yet  to  be  compromised  operate  with  a  false
               sense of confidence about their cyber security capabilities. Many companies that discover they
               have been compromised find that hackers had been in their network from as far as 4-6 months
               back, before the breach was found.

               According  to  Deloitte’s  2017  “Cyber  Risk  in  Consumer  Business”  online  survey  and  in-depth
               interviews of over 400 CIOs and CTOs in retail, restaurants and consumer products, 76% of the
               executives  felt  they  were  adequately  ready  for  cyber  incidents.  However,  82%  had  not
               documented and tested their cyber response plans involving business stakeholders in the past
               year and less than half of the executives performed threat simulations on a regular basis. For
               consumer-facing businesses who have a lot at stake should a cyber incident cause them to lose
               the  confidence  of  their  customers,  the  neglect  of  cybersecurity  best  practices  could  be
               imminently harmful to their overall business.


               Small  companies,  who  are  particularly  vulnerable  to  cyber  threats,  illustrate  the  fatal  danger
               posed to an organization that does not have adequate security practices in place. According to
               stats collected last year by the publication Small Business Trends, 43% of cyberattacks targeted
               small businesses, but only 14% of these businesses felt they were ready with a security plan. It
               is estimated that 60% of small businesses will go out of business within six months of a cyber-
               attack. Scary numbers like this are a cybersecurity-cry-for-help.



               Did Human Error Cause One of the Biggest Cyber Attacks Ever?

               The  greatest  vulnerability  in  cyber-attacks  are  not  even  the  security  programs  themselves:
               human  error  plays  a  significant  role.  According  to  a  study  from  the  IT  industry  association
               CompTIA, human error is the reason for 52 percent of the root causes of security breaches. A
               2016 Data Security Report commissioned by a law firm which handled cyber cases found that
               out of 300 security incidents it handled in the previous year, human error was the leading cause
               of the incidents, accounting for nearly 40% of them.




                   31    Cyber Defense eMagazine – November 2017 Edition
                         Copyright © 2017, Cyber Defense Magazine,  All rights reserved worldwide.
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