Cybersecurity is a dynamic concept: a system certified as secure today might be vulnerable to attacks tomorrow. Hackers work round-the-clock to breach security systems and compromise troves of personal and corporate information. The year 2018 saw a series of large-scale cybersecurity breaches and recriminations. Such mishaps often turn away customers from established businesses, as the trust factor is deeply affected. Such breaches occur either from planned cyberattacks – stealing precious intellectual property, conducting online frauds, phishing, malware propagation, etc. – or may result from innocent users sharing personal information over the internet without knowing the dangers of it.
Either way, the damage caused is huge and, in most cases, irreversible. Worse enough, one does not even get to know that a breach has taken place until it is too late to realize! It is high time businesses consider cybersecurity as one of their top priority items, allocate more resources to improve defense mechanisms and chart out a robust security strategy to tackle the threats head-on. Such a proactive approach is indispensable to protect consumer interests without disrupting business innovation and growth.
Wide Expanse of Cyberattacks
A widely prevalent security-related misconception is that only those firms dealing with finance (banks, investment companies, etc.) need to bother about cybersecurity. The ambit of cyberattack vectors has widened to include literally everything digital: if you are connected to the online world, you are under the lens of the hacking community. All business engagement models – be they B2B or B2C – need to invest in cybersecurity to protect the consumer data collected by them.
According to Ernst & Young, customer information, financial information, and strategic plans make up the top three information sources that organizations perceive as most important assets, and also the ones most liable to breaches. Given the increasing pace and complexity of such attacks, it is thus imperative to implement cybersecurity initiatives across the organization to safeguard critical assets.
How do Cyber Threats Arise?
To comprehensively counter-attacks on the network perimeter, the use of robust technologies becomes essential. Identification of security risks upfront and redressing them with proper mitigation strategies should be an ongoing exercise, rather than a one-time activity to be carried out at the time of installation of a network system. At the core, it is important to understand that threat vectors emerge from two primary sources – humans and technology. An increasingly interconnected world has made it easy for hackers to glean details from social media and use them enticingly to generate phishing/scam communications. Such seamless information availability makes it far more difficult to handle cyber threats, as information can be intelligently mined from multiple sources, including online transactions, and used enticingly in some other form to trap them. It has thus become essential to inform employees about such traps and train them to be cyber aware.
Choosing the Right Approach
Technological solutions come across as the biggest lifesaver for businesses to be prepared against impending cyber threats. Depending on business needs, one should search for solutions that adhere best to their requirements. The constraints on accessing corporate applications and data should be intelligently managed such that there is a delicate balance maintained between access safeguards and business growth. A good cybersecurity solution should protect your revenue-business model and enable greater growth, not impinge on it!
In an increasingly interconnected and open digital world, where anywhere, anytime access to corporate information has become commonplace for employees, it is indispensable to secure the networks and optimize the supply chains carefully. Integration with third-party systems makes perfect business sense, but this requires proper security management policies in place to wade off any threats emerging from other systems. The total security framework is thus only as strong as the weakest link in the entire spectrum.
The All-Pervading Solution
With many industrial sectors getting connected digitally to keep pace with development, many critical infrastructures are dependent on cybersecurity solutions, like AppSealing, to protect their revenue streams and undeterred business growth avenues. Time has thus come to scale up cybersecurity initiatives on a mass scale, commensurate to the dependencies organizations establish with internet-connected devices when they share information over multiple platforms.
Cyber risks are going to be there. In fact, incidences in terms of magnitude and complexity are only going to rise henceforth. It is thus essential that corporates and entrepreneurs are equipped with robust security solutions and roadmaps to deal with such unforeseen situations comprehensively and protect their business brand and consumer interests effectively.