Cyberattacks have been a threat to organizations for over 10 years and the enforcement of cybersecurity has been necessary to hinder these attacks. However, since the pandemic, the reliance on remote work has increased, meaning more potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities in financial institutions. Indeed, this massive growth in digital footprints has provided more opportunities for cybercriminals to infiltrate organizations, putting businesses at greater risk given their resources dedicated to cybersecurity. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, the global annual cost of cybercrime is predicted to reach $8 trillion USD in 2023. Compounding this is the rising cost of damages resulting from cybercrime, which started at $3 trillion in 2015 and, increasing on average by 15% per year, is expected to reach $10.5 trillion by 2025.1 This is the reason why cybersecurity is so crucial.
But what is cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity is the practice of protecting critical systems and sensitive information from digital attacks, otherwise called cyberattacks.2 Cybersecurity measures are designed to hinder attacks and threats against networked systems and applications, whether those threats come from the inside or from the outside of the organization. They must be proactive in protecting their customers, their data, their customers, their networks and their operations against theft, disruption, and destruction. These cyberattacks are an exploitation of systems or network. They breach data by using malicious codes to compromise data and leak, steal, or keep the data hostage. These cyberattacks can come under various forms, such as access breaches, identity thefts, ransomwares, password sniffing, infiltration of your system, website defacement, phishing, trojans, malware, viruses, and so on.
Cybersecurity includes different measures to counter these cyberattacks. They must deploy a suitable countermeasure for every attack to prevent them from exploiting a weakness:3
- Raise Awareness
First, raising awareness is essential as the biggest threat for organizations for cyberattacks comes from the lack of attention from people within the organization, for example through phishing emails. Phishing emails to employees are one of the most common ways hackers enter a database. Statistics show that over 3.4 billion phishing emails have been mailed globally.4 These emails contain malware via links or ads that give hackers access to data on click, including all credentials. Phishing emails are usually difficult to detect as they often seem official and legitimate. Therefore, informing employees and implementing trainings could ensure that the organization is prepared when attacked. Once trained, collaborators can become assets: handling the data and being on the network more frequently will allow them to notice changes more easily.
- Strong password
Interestingly, over 80% of a company’s data breaches result from vulnerable passwords.5 Enforcing collaborators to use a strong password is the key to preventing hackers from accessing data too easily. It does not need to be an overly complex sequence, but it should ideally be a sequence of different types of characters.
- Control access
Access control systems are designed to restrict certain people from accessing part or all of your network. They require authorizations to gain privileged access, blocking access to both people and hackers to business data and services they are not meant to use. This gives you a greater knowledge of the ins and outs of the network, preventing issues from the source but also allowing you to spot any deviations from the norm.
- Firewall security
Placing a firewall on your network creates an initial barrier for cyber attackers. It prevents any suspicious traffic from entering your device, blocking access to hackers and viruses.
- Back-up your data on a regular basis
Data back-ups already exist in organizations, as they allow to retrieve data in case of a computer malfunction, computer loss, and so on. However, their role does not stop there. Regular data back-ups are also important in case of a cyberattack: to remove a virus, everything must be erased, and keeping a backup of your data ensures all is not lost and that the data can be restored afterwards.
- Create encrypted data backups
Ensuring that your important and sensitive data is stored in an encrypted format is the first step. Keep in mind that hackers will have an easier time accessing your data if it is in normal-text format. Data encryption prevents such breaches and restricts access to those possessing the encryption key. Data encryption guarantees that even in the event of a breach, unauthorized parties will only be able to access the data but not read it. Some encryption softwares alert you when an unauthorized profile is attempting to tamper with the data.
In conclusion, it is more important than ever to increase cybersecurity measures. Cyberattacks will remain at high risk as remote working has become increasingly popular since the pandemic. As businesses continue to struggle with cyber threats brought on by the surge in remote work and increase in online commerce brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, cybersecurity has risen to the top of corporate agendas. According to research from Gartner, 88% of boards now regard cybersecurity as a business risk rather than simply a technical problem for IT.6 This indicates that organizations are more than ever aware of the risk, which should lead to an even bigger focus on cybersecurity.
Sources
[2] What is Cybersecurity? | IBM
[3] 10 Cyber Security Measures To Implement In 2022 | C>Ways (cways.co.uk)
[4] Cyber Attacks Expected To Grow To 15.4 Million By 2023 – TechBullion
[5] Cyber Attacks Expected To Grow To 15.4 Million By 2023 – TechBullion