As the world is entering the new decade, cybersecurity has become not just a precautionary measure but a necessity. The previous decade has taught us to be more vigilant and always be ready for anything.
Cybersecurity statistics.
Cybercrimes are increasing in number as well as severity. The attacks could be data breach to use the data for identity theft or could be for ruining a firm’s reputation. According to Cybint Solutions, around 62% of businesses faced some kind of cybersecurity issue in the year 2018. And this percentage is increasing. The University of Maryland has researched that hackers attack an entity around 2,244 times per day. That becomes an attack every 39 seconds, not even in minutes. Just imagine the threat your business is facing on a daily basis.
Let’s look at the year 2019. In only the first six months of the year, data breachers have leaked 4.1 billion records(RiskBased), and that is just the first half. If we try to examine the effects of these breaches, according to (Security Intelligence), the average cost that a firm had to incur due to data breaches was 3.9 million dollars.
Now let us take a look at the stats regarding the security preparations.according to Varonis, 64% of Americans have never even inspected once if they are getting affected by any data breach. And even if they are aware of the cybersecurity state and they do care about their security, 56% of Americans don’t know what to do in case of a data breach.
According to another report by Varonis, on average, only 5% of companies have their folders secured properly.
Now let us take a look at the previous trends to predict what we can face tomorrow. According to a report by Verizon in 2019, 71% of security breaches were financial-based, and 25% were targeted to espionage. Well! That is scary. According to the same report, 28 % of breaches used malware, 52% of them used hacking, and 32 % were social engineering based.
Security tips for 2020
Cybersecurity never stays the same. It evolves every day.new threats force us to keep updated and evolve with the trends. Here are a few tips to be secure in the year 2020.
1.indulge A.I (artificial intelligence) in your security systems.
If you have not introduced A.I in your cybersecurity strategy, start from that. A.I is becoming an essential utility for cybersecurity systems. Threats and cyber attacks are getting frequent with time, and it's getting very difficult for human teams to detect and resolve the issues alone. It is getting complicated to detect false alarms from real threats. Here is where A.I come in. A.I tools can learn the normal patterns of the system and can identify the deviations that occur. Some A.I tools classify the threats according to the severity and urgency, which helps the human teams to tackle the attacks that are most urgent.
- Secure the IoT devices.
IoT devices are getting popular very quickly. According to Gartner that IoT devices will reach around 5.8 million for enterprise and automotive applications alone by 2020. That is about a 21% increase in just one year. All of these connected devices give us the convenience we need in our workplaces. Still, the problem arises when organizations do not have knowledge about the IoT devices that are connected to their systems. These ignorances can be a huge gateway for security attackers.according to Ponemon institute research that was conducted in 2019, there is an 11% increase in IoT devices breach from 2017 to 2019.
Firms should make it a practice to secure the IoT devices before they get in the offices for use.
- Don’t expect one solution to fit all of your needs
Get ready to invest in new tools.most of the cybersecurity solution providers design their offers in a way that caters to a large sector of companies, but it does not mean you will not need any other product. Obviously, not all brands are the same. Some are definitely more to the point than others. But there is no single solution that can conquer all of your cybersecurity issues.
The solution to that problem is to make informed decisions. Invest smartly. Get educated about the cybersecurity solutions that are available. The next step would be to estimate what kind of threats your company could be facing this year. Then search for the products that can provide the solutions you would need to make your firm secure in the year 2020.
Another point is to appoint competent employees for the job. A good criterion would be to hire people with proper ccie security certification or ccie collaboration certification. Another way could be to train your employees and get ccie security online training.
- educate your employees on BEC phishing scams and poor file-sharing practices.
Hopefully, your firms train the employees to recognize basic cybersecurity threats. A basic cyber breach can be caused by phishing scams. In these scams, an outsider poses to be a firm employee and tries to get sensitive information from firms employees.it could be through email or through an organization’s system.
According to Code42, 31% of employees don’t use the firm’s authorized platform to share files within the firm. Instead, people use social platforms to do so, which makes the data leaks very easy and makes it difficult for firms to keep track of their data.
- Include 5G in your plans
Even if you are not sure if your area will get fully functioning 5G network. 5G is the future, and you should be able to embrace the impact it would have in future
Summary
- Cybercrimes are increasing in number as well as severity
- indulge A.I (artificial intelligence) in your security systems.
- Secure the IoT devices.
- Don’t expect one solution to fit all of your needs
- Educate your employees on BEC phishing scams and poor file-sharing practices.
- Include 5G in your plans