The Future of Cyber (In)Security
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a high profile CEO or a 12 year-old girl just browsing the Internet. You can all be victims of cybercrime,” says River Oakfield founder and CEO Cal Leeming:
If a cyber security breach doesn’t directly affect your company it’s not your problem, right? Absolutely WRONG! Massive data breaches are a common occurrence and are growing exponentially. The trend seems to be that large corporate companies are aware of cyber security breaches from other firms, but tend to think it’s that company’s problem - not theirs. That way of thinking is quickly given some sobering reality; all are susceptible to the dangers of online cyber criminals. And reputational damage affects the bottom line directly and indirectly.
There are myriad reasons why security breaches are so prevalent. Topping this list is many large organisations, or just some of their employees, using third-party applications (ie. Dropbox, LinkedIn, and often using company credit cards to pay online). The list of companies that have employee indiscretions exposing security holes and now-public breach points is truly staggering. On top of that there’s the infamous and dreaded Mirai bot; there’s widgets being made with a default password and then given an IP address that are being picked up by network servers; there’s companies that have no business in cyber security selling useless blinking boxes under the guise of creating a false sense of security. The list goes on and on.
“Third parties get breached, and your information leaks. Breaches mean you lose money.”
Yet another situation companies have to face is the laissez-faire attitude of their employees. “Why should I care?” they might ask. Because, simply put, breaches mean your company loses money and credibility. There’s loss of consumer confidence, share price impact and the major expense of remediation downtime, to name but a few. With a small percentage of turnover actually generating into real profit, these factors can quite literally put a company out of business. On top of that, there are new regulatory watchdogs coming in that will present a company with a huge fine for a security breach within, one that might very well come in from a third-party application.
“We live in a society where we know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.”
But, it’s not just organizations and large companies that need to be wary, nay, frightened, of the cyber security pandemic. Perhaps worse yet, this type of digital crime is becoming so prevalent that people are becoming desensitized to it.
So who knows the truth of what’s going on out there? How well do companies know the inner workings of their cyber security protocols and the people in charge of monitoring them? It’s coming to the point where there are two types of companies in the world - those that have been hacked and those that think they haven’t been hacked. What is the true value of personal and corporate data? This is a vital soul-searching question that needs to be answered honestly and informatively. Do the research and seek out the advice. And budget accordingly.