Whether you are a business owner or an individual that owns a lot of IT – unless you have taken the correct pro-active measures to protect your equipment, you could find yourself exposed. Many people will purchase things like virus malware software which to a degree does support the level of security, but is this enough considering the maturity of viruses in today’s world?
Some statistics
Here are some statistics in relation to cyber-attacks:
- It is estimated that by 2020 the average cost associated with a data breach will exceed $150 million.
- Over 75% of the healthcare industry has somehow had an infection in the last year in relation to a security breach of their IT.
- By 2021 it is estimated that there will be an annual amount of $1 trillion spent annually by people and companies trying to protect their equipment.
- Every 39 seconds a company is hacked.
These statistics may sound pretty alarming and unfortunately, as the world uses more IT in order to operate, the risk effectively is growing each year.
How Can IT be protected?
There is a lot that a company can do in order to try and protect their IT equipment from a security breach and actually a lot of the breaches are down to human error, as the attack will generally come via the weakest link in the security system. Investing in Penetration Testing is a good option that people may wish to consider, if looking to get the best protection available. Here, your IT systems will be reviewed to see where the weakest links are and recommendations and solutions given in order to protect these best. This is far more cost-effective than purchasing an off the shelf solution that has only limited effectiveness, as there will always be many blind spots.
The Penetration Test will assess the equipment to ensure that global threats are taken into consideration, awareness of what the most recent and mature attacks are and how best your equipment may be placed in order to avoid the outbreak entering your systems.
The Consequence of a Cyber Attack
If the equipment is breached and compromised then unfortunately, this can have severe consequences. You only need to read the newspapers to see constant examples of this and how it has affected business globally (to the extent that it has brought them to their knees). Here is what could happen:
- The attackers may demand a massive ransom in order to lift the attack.
- The attack could be so severe that it could stop operations entirely within the business.
- The attack could retrieve sensitive data (like the financial details of customers)
- The attack could also leave you open to legal action (if for example data protection of your customers was breached and leaked).
As a result, the operational, reputational and financial impacts of an attack could be significant, therefore making the investment to ensure enough has been done pro-actively prevent this is a must.