In the first 2 weeks of 2018, a hospital in Indiana was hacked and held for ransom. According to Health IT Security magazine, 67% of Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) believe that they will be subject to a Cybersecurity attack in 2018. Seventy percent of CISOs said that a lack of competent in-house staff was their top security threat, with 65 percent stating that “inadequate in-house expertise” was the top reason they would likely have a data breach.
All levels of employees within a company are subject to being phishing targets – one innocent click could result in a major security breach. The biggest targets are often senior executives of a corporation.
Several Cybersecurity experts predict that we can expect Cybercrime to be more sophisticated in 2018, and that ransomware is likely to evolve into different flavors. 2017 statistics show that ransomware increased by 36% during the year. According to the FBI, more than 4000 ransomware attacks occur daily. 91% of cyber attacks start with a phishing email – 156 million of these phishing emails are sent globally every day. In 2017, 1 in 131 emails contained malware, and new malware specimens emerge every few seconds.
With Cybercrime damages expecting to cost the world over $6 trillion annually by 2021, why are so many corporations still not doing enough to protect themselves? Cyber attacks have already become increasingly sophisticated, and the trend will only continue. Often a cyber attack takes too long to be detected. A high level of preparedness is necessary in businesses of all sizes. The very first step of assessing your security posture is to conduct a complete security risk assessment. Has your company done a security risk assessment yet? Schedule your security risk assessment today.
By Rema Deo.