Cyber Security
Why is Cyber Security Important in 2022?
Why is cyber security important all of a sudden? Not that long ago, it was primarily something for only the techies to worry about. Corporate leaders widely viewed it as the responsibility of their IT department. Many thought – perhaps naively, it now seems – that so long as the right firewalls, antivirus packages and encryption tools were in place, they could leave IT security to the experts and focus on the other myriad elements of running a business.Presumably, you’re now very much aware that cyber security is something nobody can afford to ignore. Unless you hide from the world’s media, you must know that hacks and data breaches regularly affect firms of all sizes. Often these incidents are significant enough to make the front pages, causing irreparable reputational damage to the companies involved.
If you’re not worried about cyber security, you should be.
So what’s changed?
Fundamentally, we’re living in a far more technologically-advanced world than we were as recently as a decade ago. If you need convincing of this, consider the fact that the iPad has only been around since 2010, and the iPhone only came out a few years before that. Average broadband speeds have increased by roughly five-fold in the last decade, making it possible for businesses and individuals to do far more online.A particularly valid example of the change that this has facilitated is the rise in cloud services. Nowadays, most businesses take for granted such things as easy online document sharing, email that’s available on every device, and databases accessible from everywhere. While the years have seen enterprises increasing deployment of business-critical applications in the cloud, Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud has only been available since 2006.
The rise of cybercrime
This rise in the widespread use of technology brought with it a rise in cybercrime. For hackers, the possibilities increased exponentially, along with the potential rewards. At one end of the scale, you have “script kiddies” hoping for a modest payday from unleashing some ransomware on a single computer. At the other, there are “state-sponsored” hackers, who’ve switched to cybercrime as a method of war, viewing it as “cheaper, faster and easier than traditional conflict.”The fact that cybercrime now permeates every facet of society shows why cyber security is crucially important.
Damage to companies
There have been so many hacks and data breaches in recent years that it’s easy to produce a laundry list of household name brands and organizations that have been affected.Just a few examples are:
- Facebook, the social media giant had over 540 million user records exposed on Amazon’s cloud computing service.
- First American Corporation, had 885 million records exposed in a data breach that included bank account info, social security numbers, wire transactions, and mortgage paperwork.
- Equifax, the global credit ratings agency who experienced a data breach that affected a staggering 147 Million customers. The costs of recovering from the hack were recently estimated at $439 Million.
- The UK National Health Service (NHS), which was temporarily brought to its knees with a relatively rudimentary ransomware attack, resulting in cancelled operations and considerable clean-up costs. This specific attack became particularly embarrassing for the UK government, when it emerged that “basic IT security” could have prevented it.
- Yahoo,the web giant that suffered a breach affecting every one of its three Billion customer accounts. Direct costs of the hack ran to around $350 Million, and while it’s harder to quantify reputational damage, it’s probably fair to say that Yahoo is not the first port of call for consumers seeking a safe and secure place to host an email account!
In fact, one particularly chilling statistic is that there are now over 4000 hacks every single day using ransomware alone. It’s extremely misguided for anyone to think their company couldn’t be affected.
Endless statistics
It’s incredibly easy to find cybercrime statistics to shock and surprise people and prove strong reasons for cyber security. In fact, it’s fair to wonder if people may have become a little desensitized to them, or that the sheer scale of the numbers makes them hard to take in.For starters, it’s estimated that the global cost of cybercrime for 2017 added up to around $600 Billion. The number mounts up every year, and by 2021 pundits are suggesting a figure of $6 Trillion per year.
But perhaps it’s better to focus on statistics that are more relatable to you personally – in your role in your business, for example:
How about the fact that 54% of firms had their network or data compromised last year? If you’re one of the few people yet to experience being in the thick of such an attack, the fact that it happens to more than half of companies in a year suggests it could well be your turn soon.
Or, perhaps you could keep yourself awake by considering the average cost of recovering from a cyber-attack, which is estimated at $5 Million. If you run a smaller business, this might seem like an enormous figure, but these things are proportional. Plenty of small businesses could be wiped out by a bill of $50,000. This is reflected in a final statistic that’s widely quoted: 60% of small businesses who experience a major cybercrime incident go out of business shortly after.
Standing up to the threat
So, with all this in mind, “why is cyber security important?” should now be a question with a clear answer. So, what can you do fight against the growing threat? Here are some suggestions:1. Keep informed
It’s no longer realistic or fair to expect an IT department to mitigate every IT security risk (and in reality it never really was). Many modern cyber security threats originate from social engineering, user error, exploits to web browsers, and other things that technical teams can only do so much to protect you from.
Cyber security is something everyone needs to take notice of, and a huge number of incidents are caused by people ignoring mainstream advice around avoiding clicking on suspicious links and maintaining secure passwords. Hackers love “low hanging fruit,” so don’t allow you or your teams to be that fruit!
2. Move beyond antivirus
Antivirus software is still an essential part of the IT security armoury, but it’s not enough – by itself – to protect from modern threats. Technical teams need many more tools, resources and solutions, and some of them are expensive. However, they’re not likely to be as expensive as the cost of clearing up after a cyber-attack.
3. Get insured
The market for cyber security insurance has boomed in the last couple of years, and it’s now something that companies of all sizes need to think about. Cyber security insurance isn’t only about protecting against financial risk. If your company is hit by a data breach, there’s a lot of damage to contain, and you may need help with that from the kind of experts and damage-limitation specialists your insurer could provide.
4. Take your flow of data seriously
Another good example of why cyber security isn’t merely a technology issue is how easy it is for a member of staff in any department to cause a data breach. A breach is still a breach whether it’s caused by a hacker in a darkened room attacking a network, or a distracted employee leaving an unencrypted personal device on public transport.
Recent legislation, such as Europe’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), has forced many companies to take a really good look at the importance of cyber security, and how they store and process data. Instead of feeling ground down by this weight of this compliance, another option is to use it as an opportunity to really think about your company’s use of data. With some simple thought, it’s relatively easy to eliminate weak spots in processes that could expose data, cause a breach, or simply make life easier for hackers than it needs to be.
5. Think about backup and recovery
A company is hit by ransomware every 40 seconds, but the irony is that no firm needs to pay a ransom if their backups and disaster recovery efforts are on point. Yes, such a cyber-attack will cause annoyance and disruption, but if a backup is there, there’s no need to pay hackers any money.
This probably strikes you as an extremely basic point. However, it’s clear that plenty of companies drop the ball. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a statistic saying that nearly half of affected US companies end up paying ransoms to hackers! This indicates that an awful lot of companies don’t manage to get business continuity right, however obvious the need for it may seem. This is not only about ransomware – reliable backups back all kinds of hacks and breaches easier to recover from.
Why is cyber security important? Hopefully, the answer is now clear! It’s not going to get any less important in the coming years. Numerous studies point to a predicted increase in attacks, and it seems likely the statistics will get more shocking and the financial losses more breath-taking. While we continue to hand over more elements of modern life to technology, this shouldn’t surprise us.
Top 10 Reasons to Learn Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity has become a key area of job growth in the last few years, which has resulted from an influx of people opting for a Cybersecurity career. Even so, there are a number of people who are still having second thoughts as to whether they should jump into the unknown waters of Cybersecurity for their professional life. This blog, addressing the “Top 10 Reasons to Learn Cybersecurity” should definitely help you confused folks make up your min.Below are the key factors that have made Cybersecurity certification such a brilliant career choice for many in my opinion:
Cybersecurity has slowly transformed into an evergreen industry. Like air pollution was a by-product of the industrial revolution, cyber-attacks are a similar by-product of the digital revolution. Keeping this situation in mind, and looking at the advances we have made as a community since the invention of the internet, I think it’s an obvious conclusion that Cybersecurity as a viable career option is here to stay. With the advent of topics like Big Data, Internet of Things and Cloud Computing the permanent stature of Cybersecurity and the magnitude of its importance has been very well set in stone. So if you wish to learn cybersecurity in today’s age, it’s definitely a good idea.
For those of you, who aspire to travel the globe, cybersecurity might just be the perfect career path. Thousands of home-grown cybersecurity experts or working to protect businesses, government agencies, and general consumers. On a global scale, the rise in cyber-attacks is outpacing the supply of cyber-defenders. This results in plenty of opportunities for cybersecurity professionals and experts to travel overseas to serve their skills which are in high demand. Hence, if you have ever wanted to work in a different country, then a career in cybersecurity might just be your perfect passport to success!
Cybersecurity Companies have defended us time and time again against a variety of cyber-attacks that to compromise our confidentiality, availability, and integrity. Even so, the number of cybercrimes are only increasing day by day. Millions are falling prey to phishing scams, ransomware & spyware, DDoS attacks. The online threat to companies, big or small and individuals too is large and growing. Around the world, National Crime Agencies, Police Forces, Company SecurityTteamsare all fighting this menace – but they need more help. They need people like you. If you want the satisfaction of doing a rewarding job and if you want to make a real difference, learn cybersecurity and join industry!
It’s certain that Cybersecurity Professionals have a clear shot at working with prestigious fortune 500 companies like Dell, Accenture, InfoTech etc., but the potential doesn’t end there. Experts who prove to be worthy of their skills might earn the chance to work with top-secret government agencies and intelligence agencies eg MI6, Mossad, NSA. So if you learn cybersecurity, you might just become a top-secret agent!
It’s a known fact that not everyone shares the same love and affection for maths that some people seem to have. If you recognize yourself as a person who always had an aversion to mathematics then a career in cybersecurity should be right up your alley. Cybersecurity courses are completely free from mathematics. Instead, you spend time honing skills like programming and networking which helps you build a career specific skill set!
Cyber-attacks are getting smarter by the day. Cybersecurity professionals are always busy outsmarting black hat hackers, patching vulnerabilities and analysing the risk of an organization. Tackling such attacks in an ever-advancing industry only comes with continuous study and thorough research. This means after you learn cybersecurity and start working, your knowledge is continuously enriched and with experience, your wisdom continuously gets honed and thus the sky is the limit when we are talking about personal growth in the cybersecurity industry.
There are over a million companies in this world spread across a variety of sectors and industries and a large proportion of them share one thing in common today i.e. need for an internet connection. More than 400,000 people already work in the information security industry and demand for cyber skills is growing fast in every type of company and government department. So, whether you dream of working in sports or fashion, media or the emergency services, finance or retail, cyber skills could your gateway as everyone needs someone, to defend their sensitive data.
As a cybersecurity professional you are not confined to a singular industry unlike a majority of the professional world. Digitalisation is taking place across a lot of industries. With advancements in the field of IOT, Big Data, Automation, and Cloud Computing we could say we are going through a Digital revolution. So being a cybersecurity doesn’t stop you from working in a hospital, school, government agencies, and top-secret military agencies. The gates are wide open as almost everybody wants to be secure on the digital front.
Due to the unpredictable nature of the future, a career in cybersecurity is not and cannot be static and stale. You will be challenged on a regular basis. There will be new and unexpected failures as well as amazing and surprising discoveries. One certainty is that attackers will continue to develop new exploits on a constant basis and it is your job to find creative, and optimized solutions to the arising problems. As a cybersecurity professional, you will be solving new puzzles, fighting off new demons, and supporting new activities on a regular basis. So if you tend to easily get bored due to things being monotonous, fret not, Cybersecurity never gets boring!
I think we all can agree that ‘money makes the world go round‘. The world has realized the sheer importance of cybersecurity, with stories in the news almost every week of new cyber-attacks. Faced with online attacks, business and government agencies are looking for experts who can protect their systems from cybercriminals – and they are willing to pay high salaries and provide training and development. There are great opportunities for anyone starting a career in cybersecurity:
