Cybersecurity is an emerging discipline and many businesses and organizations in this past decade have audaciously confined themselves with the rules and principles of it. The world is in dire need of cybersecurity, there is no second thought about it but are we doing enough with our understanding of cybersecurity? Is everything under control, are no new cyber breaches or hacks are taking place?
No, it is on the contrary, as organizations are coming to an understanding about the use of cybersecurity and its practical knowledge, the hackers and cybercriminals are trying their best to take advantage of this vulnerability. Many new cases of cyber breaches and manipulation are being reported every passing day, new applications for cracking personal as well as financial information is being developed by hackers and ill practitioners of digital systems.
If you thought that everything was good with the world of cybersecurity and there are no alarming conditions whatsoever then you are clearly misinformed. Following facts and stats would help you to revise your understanding of cybersecurity and its emergence in global systems;
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Every minute, there is a hacking attempt
We are surrounded by digital systems from dusk till dawn, we use it in our offices, in our educational institutes, banks as well as other places, even at our homes. But have we ever stopped for a moment and realized are these things secure? The answer is not so much, every single minute, thirty-nine seconds to be exact there is a hacking attempt being carried out on different targets and with different intentions in mind.
Who is the culprit here? Of course, our own negligence on not updating our security systems and using a weak username and password as our credentials for using secured devices is one of the reasons, why.
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Most preferred target for hackers is small businesses
Out of 100 attacks that are carried out on businesses for the sake of exploiting personal or financial information 40% of these attempts target small businesses and startups, why? Because being small or inadequate business commodity the chances are that the security infrastructure there is not adequate or seriously timid. This gives a smooth chance to hackers for infiltrating these businesses and retrieving whatever they want. Not only this but not enough training of the employees about social engineering and phishing traps is another reason why these organizations experience more attacks than others.
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2018 has been a dark year regarding data theft
Even if you think that 2018 was not so much as a distant or a lackluster year for cybersecurity installations and practices but you will be amazed to know the exact numbers on data theft and related breaches that were on a spike that year. Approximately half a billion personal records and data were stolen by the hackers while some of it kept for further use, while a major part of it was sold on the dark web. Every second of every day there are cyber breaches reported around the world and the amount of data that is pulled away in those breaches is just ravishing.
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Healthcare industry is a favorite target
For many hackers and cybercriminals, the health industry, health agencies as well as medical treatment facilities are the prime target. Because of the insurance agencies backing the primary health care facilities. Hackers mainly exploit the records section of these health facilities to retrieve any personal or financial information they can get their hands on.
This way they can open a backdoor within the insurance agencies and then inflict their security systems with payload to retrieve financial information of these organizations too, thus hitting two targets with one stone. Almost 70-75% of the health industry, hospitals, or medial training centers have been infected with malware or other types of payload this year, putting these organizations on the front line as a failing cyber mission.
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The DDoS attack is at its peak
You must have heard a lot about the DDoS attacks, what it is, and how it can affect the operations and security of an organization. Denial of service can not only affect the security of the organization but that of the clients too, a possibility is that after experiencing an attack of this scale your customers and users would be badly affected and would refrain from visiting your website ever again.
These are the dire consequences of a DDoS attack, but there is more to this. The DDoS attack is increasing and gaining a fatal reputation in the world of cybersecurity and is expected to grow to an even 500% in the upcoming years, making the likelihood of safe web surfing a nightmare.
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Number of connected devices
Today almost every electric device or gadget that we use comes with an already laced internet access feature or built-in Wi-Fi. This way we can increase our productivity on the internet and can sync our work on these connected devices. By the end of this year, there would be approximately more than 200 billion devices connected to the internet.
Where this moment is a moment of awe among many people, it is an alarming condition putting our attention and focus on the ever-increasing cyber incidents and likewise breaches. Instead of feeling blessed for accomplishing such as goal, we should be more bent on the idea of protecting these devices on the internet and making the internet a safer platform for everyone.
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Uninhabited cybersecurity jobs
By the end of the year 2021, there would be almost 3.5 million uninhabited cybersecurity jobs, which is in capacity an achievement or a moment of hoorah. These cybersecurity facts and stats should force us to take a second look at all the preparations that we have done to make sure that our presence on the internet stays secure and enough implementations are done to mask our information on the internet.
If you want to improve your experience with whatever IT field that you are serving then indulge yourself into network security training online or incorporate your employees in this training you will surely be a better organization for it.