A Cyberattack Is The #1 Risk For Business
British Prime Minister Theresa May wants a new “deep and special” security partnership between the UK and the EU after Brexit, focusing on military, intelligence and counter-terrorism. What about cybersecurity?
Recently the UK National Cyber Security Centre revealed the charity sector is particularly vulnerable to attacks.
The week before, UK think tanks were hacked by groups in China, and the US is leaning on the UK for insight into cyber defence. A cyber arms race is developing, with cyber war on the horizon.
Businesses and the public sector must now push through effective cyber security initiatives to help mitigate this looming threat of cybercriminals, who are effectively open-sourcing their malware codes and creating unique, and largely undetectable threats known as ‘malware cocktails’.
Less is More
SonicWall, a cybersecurity company, have released a report, suggesting that less attacks may mean more destruction for organisations. It found that despite ransomware levels falling, with attack dropping from 645 million attacks to 184 million between 2016 and 2017, but the threats posed by the malicious code are more dangerous than ever.
“The cyber arms race affects every government, business, organisation and individual. It cannot be won by any one of us,” said SonicWall CEO Bill Conner.
“Our latest proprietary data and findings show a series of strategic attacks and countermeasures as the cyber arms race continues to escalate. By sharing actionable intelligence, we collectively improve our business and security postures against today’s most malicious threats and criminals.”
“The risks to business, privacy and related data grow by the day, so much so that cyber security is outranking some of the more traditional business risks and concerns,” said Conner.
Security Industry Advances
Even with WannaCry, Petya, NotPetya and Bad Rabbit ransomware attacks stealing the headlines, the expectations of more ransomware attacks simply did not materialise as anticipated in 2017.
As revealed earlier, the total volume of ransomware attacks has declined. However, web traffic encrypted by SSL/TLS standards made yet another significant jump in 2017, increasing by 24%. This shift has already given more opportunity for cybercriminals and threat actors to hide malicious payloads in encrypted traffic.
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