Page 31 - Cyber Defense eMagazine - November 2017

DOES YOUR COMPANY HAVE ADEQUATE SECURITY

PROGRAMS IN THE ERA OF CYBER ATTACKS?

MANY COMPANIES HAVE A FALSE SENSE OF CONFIDENCE ABOUT THEIR
CYBER SECURITY CAPABILITIES

by Doug Ramos, Security Practice Manager, Groupware Technology
Facing ever-evolving malware, vulnerabilities and hacking attempts, companies today need to
seriously look at and evaluate their cyber security policies.

Studies show a vast number of businesses of all kinds seem to be woefully unprepared to deal
with cyber threats. Some companies that have yet to be compromised operate with a false
sense of confidence about their cyber security capabilities. Many companies that discover they
have been compromised find that hackers had been in their network from as far as 4-6 months
back, before the breach was found.

According to Deloitte’s 2017 “Cyber Risk in Consumer Business” online survey and in-depth
interviews of over 400 CIOs and CTOs in retail, restaurants and consumer products, 76% of the
executives felt they were adequately ready for cyber incidents. However, 82% had not
documented and tested their cyber response plans involving business stakeholders in the past
year and less than half of the executives performed threat simulations on a regular basis. For
consumer-facing businesses who have a lot at stake should a cyber incident cause them to lose
the confidence of their customers, the neglect of cybersecurity best practices could be
imminently harmful to their overall business.

Small companies, who are particularly vulnerable to cyber threats, illustrate the fatal danger
posed to an organization that does not have adequate security practices in place. According to
stats collected last year by the publication Small Business Trends, 43% of cyberattacks targeted
small businesses, but only 14% of these businesses felt they were ready with a security plan. It
is estimated that 60% of small businesses will go out of business within six months of a cyber-
attack. Scary numbers like this are a cybersecurity-cry-for-help.

Did Human Error Cause One of the Biggest Cyber Attacks Ever?

The greatest vulnerability in cyber-attacks are not even the security programs themselves:
human error plays a significant role. According to a study from the IT industry association
CompTIA, human error is the reason for 52 percent of the root causes of security breaches. A
2016 Data Security Report commissioned by a law firm which handled cyber cases found that
out of 300 security incidents it handled in the previous year, human error was the leading cause
of the incidents, accounting for nearly 40% of them.

31 Cyber Defense eMagazine – November 2017 Edition
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