IT Security and Risk Management Review

With the world turning digital, people are connected to multiple  devices throughout the day. Listening to your iPod at home, connecting to Wi-Fi at the coffee shop, or accessing your smartphone at work can leave you open to all kinds of cybercrime.

The digital world consists of the widespread use of mobile devices that cybercriminals are able to access through platforms, social networks, and the public cloud.

Organizations in particular need to protect against multi-faceted ‘advanced persistent threats’ (APTs – also known as ‘advanced targeted attacks, or ATAs).

The key attributes are:  the use of social engineering (such as spear phishing) to gain initial entry to a target organization’s network and execute a zero-day attack; the acquisition of privileges to further penetrate the target network; the establishment of communication links with external ‘command and control’ (C&C) servers; the theft or compromise of assets; and the covering of tracks after completing the mission.

Source: The Ponemon Institute/HP

 

Cost of a Cyberattack

The Ponemon Institute’s 2013 survey has found that the average annul cost of  cybercrime is $7.2 million per organization.

This represents a 30% increase from the year before.  The United States takes the greatest hit out of all countries surveyed.

Denial of Services (DoS) attacks account for the highest percentage of costs in both smaller(16%) and larger (22%) companies.

Attacks like viruses, worms and trojans, and phishing and social engineering (both 1.7x more prevalent in smaller organizations), malware (2.5x) and botnets (2.7x).

The larger companies are hit the hardest by Dos, and malicious insiders attacks.

Source: The Ponemon Institute/HP

Source: The Ponemon Institute/HP

The survey shows the average number of days that it takes to resolve the cyberattack ranges from 2.6 days for viruses, worms and trojans up to 53 days for malicious insider attacks:

Source: The Ponemon Institute/HP

To view more Internet Security full reports:

1. Symantec – Internet Security Threat Report 2013
2. Trustwave – 2013 Trustwave Gloval Security Report
3. PwC – 2013 Information Security Breaches Survey

Hyphenet can help you find the right type of cyberdefence for your company.  Rackmount appliances, cloud-based services and threat defense are all precautions you can take to protect your business and keep the bad guys out.

Call us today!  619-325-0990

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References:

McLellan, Charles
IT Security and Risk Management: An overview
http://www.zdnet.com/it-security-and-risk-management-an-overview_p3-7000022659/