Cybersecurity Threats In 2019
Cybercrime hit business with increasing costsin 2018. This has been significant as cyber criminals have learnt from their own success and are now far more effective in their attack and steal processes. Many cybercriminal groups are now organising themselves along more traditional business processes and are improving their criminal effectiveness.
65% of large UK firms realised that they had been breached and attacked in 2018 and ransomware has become more common as a method criminal profit.
2018 also saw a massive increase in global cybercrime with Interpol reporting that it now runs in the billions of euros/pounds and dollars. Now cyber-crime is fastest growing areas of global crime and now instead of a few small groups and some individuals committing the crimes the groups have now grown and are very similar in sophistication and process to large traditional business models.
The crimes themselves have not changed dramatically as the criminals are still taking money from stealing fraud, theft, gambling and illegal drug and fake medicine sales but the expansion of the criminal activity to cyber-crime is far more effective and profitable for criminal business in general.
The UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in 2018 that computer misuse and malware against business was significantly increasing and was up 63% in a year.
The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) which is part of GCHQ has said that cyber-crime has now reached its highest level to date and is asking all governments to advise all business to improve their cyber-security standards and actions.
The UK has made some progress but more police training is required as cybercrime is now considered by CSI to be over 1% of GDP by the end of 2019.
One of the current problems other than a lack of real cyber training for all police officers is that many businesses are still not reporting cyber-attacks as they are concerned about the public relations effects.
Cisco now has a contract to train 120k police officers in the UK on cyber security however it is still the case that trying to report a cyber-crime to the police in the UK is not easy and it often means that they send victims who have had their bank accounts robbed are sent by the police back to their bank rather than the police dealing with the crime.
The problem for the police is that they are already overstretched with the numbers of police at its lowest level since 1981 and the numbers continue to fall and so there is no capacity within the forces to spend the necessary time on cyber-crime.
Budgets for electronic systems has not for most governments, police services or commerce grown yet the potential for cyber-attacks has increased significantly and this reality will become more of a problem for many organisations over the coming months.
There are no simple answers but staff training, understanding your security issues and more carefully managing your data has become crucial.
There are a number of issues you should be monitoring including such areas as your use of cloud, training to reduce phishing attack effects and where a lot more different systems are connected.
As the use of cloud based systems increases the security issues will increase and your own IT people should monitor and check your cloud use.
It is very important to ensure that as changes and up-grades to your systems take place that all old systems are effectively cleared and completely separated from the new up-grades as entering your new systems from your old technology is a way cyber-attacks use as it is often one of the easier ways into your new system.
It has been true of some of the analysis we have done over the past years that there has been a significant increase in internal and recently left employees IT problems.
Often this is due to lack of training or when an employee leaves either through redundancy or because they have had an argument with their colleagues and or management or just because their access to the system has not been completely shut-down and so they still have access.
Costs for Cyber Security
One of the issues that needs attention is to carefully budget for how much cyber security investment should be made and this should start with analysing how much an attack could cost and its effects. Getting an independent review of your systems and personnel cyber comprehension is very worthwhile and gives you a much better understanding of the risks and ways to improve the people and systems.
Some of the broader issues that will affect organisations in 2019 will be due to AI and the ability to change and create fake news using video and audio.
One way this can affect your organisation is that these fake pieces can be used to get your staff to wrongly change something within the systems. Or it can create fake emails that con and mislead employees to pass over passwords or sensitive data and information. These effects can also be used to create fake news about a government or a company’s activities and unfortunately that will be some of the 2019 news.
It is very important that you tackle these issues before too long into the new year as going through the review process will give you a much better understanding of the potential issues and where positive action can take place that makes this year much IT safer.
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