Cyber Crime on The Rise

According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, cyber-attackers caused over $1.8 billion worth of damages or related loss to businesses in 2020.

It is true that 2020 will go down in history as one of the most disruptive years in human history – the pandemic was certainly at the forefront and while I certainly don’t want to minimize what we all experienced during this time, the IT industry along with every other industry went through a disruption and evolution of sorts.

Cyber Crime is a BILLION dollar industry.

While we were all scrambling to adjust to the “new normal” I believe we left the gate open for attackers. Let me explain – while we were pivoting to work from home, in many cases we modified our security posture to allow users to install applications or modify workstations so they have a little more flexibility so that they can keep working while the world was changing around them. Attackers were paying attention. In addition, their standard approach to trying to break through our defenses remained steadfast, researching their organizations through news articles, company announcements, and social media. Announcements about promotions, proposed acquisitions, partnerships, attendance at conferences are all information that can be used to gain the confidence of victims.

What can you do?

Well, it’s time to bring us back to reality. While the pandemic has certainly remained a focus, we have made this transformation to a more robust, scalable, and remote capable workforce. It’s now time to bring our security posture back in check.

Like any good health inspection, it should start with a trip to the doctor for a check-up. That would mean a Security Vulnerability Assessment. This will help us identify the gaps in our policies, process, and infrastructure and serve as a blueprint for a roadmap to make the necessary corrections. While there are many tools that can be bought, partners can also be a good resource to assist organizations in this process. Their specific regulatory, compliance, and current industry knowledge can be very helpful. Let them assist in developing the roadmap, then if you’re feeling confident, you can take on the execution of the remediation on your own.

If the scary statics above don’t get you motivated to hold a mirror up to your security, then this one will – Cisco, the maker of Umbrella, one of the industry’s leading security platforms, says that 86% of organizations had at least one user within their network connect to a phishing site in 2020. Think about that – it only takes one to crypto your network. This statistic comes from a company who sees over 620 billion internet requests per day.

If you are looking for additional information on this important topic contact us, and we would be happy to have a discussion with you.