Companies must act now to defend against cyber attacks

Ran­somware has become a mas­sive busi­ness which is mak­ing cyber­crim­i­nals bil­lions of dol­lars, annu­al­ly. In fact, they have pro­duc­tised it as ran­somware-as-a-ser­vice (RaaS) which allows entry-lev­el cyber­crim­i­nals to license pow­er­ful soft­ware to quick­ly exe­cute attacks. Even more per­va­sive and potent are the pro­fi­cient­ly organ­ised RaaS car­tels who are tar­get­ing thou­sands of com­pa­nies each month. Accord­ing to Keeper’s 2021 Ran­somware Impact Report, after a ran­somware attack, 77% report­ed being unable to access sys­tems or net­works as a result, 30% were down for a day and 26% were offline for up to sev­en days.

Fail­ing to be proac­tive and work togeth­er against increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed cyber­at­tacks can have dire con­se­quences for busi­ness­es. New sta­tis­tics, pub­lished in Keep­er Secu­ri­ty’s 2021 Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Cen­sus Report, attest to the alarm­ing real­i­ty.

Some 92% of UK organ­i­sa­tions have suf­fered a cyber­at­tack in the last 12 months, with well over two-thirds (72%) suc­cess­ful­ly breached more than once. How­ev­er, few­er than half (40%) are active­ly address­ing all of the weak links in their cyber defences.

The angles of attack are mul­ti­ply­ing. Ran­somware is becom­ing much more wide­ly dis­trib­uted and the bar­ri­er to entry is low­er­ing, enabling crim­i­nals to eas­i­ly license and use mal­ware and ran­somware.

The advance­ment and sophis­ti­ca­tion of tech­nol­o­gy are now cou­pled with an increased fre­quen­cy of attacks and greater col­lab­o­ra­tion between cyber­crim­i­nals. Com­pa­nies must col­lab­o­rate to defend against these threats.

Why it’s imperative to be honest and report attacks

Cyber­crim­i­nals are out­pac­ing organ­i­sa­tions in the cyber arms race. Busi­ness lead­ers must change their mind­sets to be trans­par­ent about breach­es, share knowl­edge and help one anoth­er fight back in this invis­i­ble, but crit­i­cal, field of bat­tle.

Keep­er Secu­ri­ty exam­ines the core issue: 36% of IT deci­sion-mak­ers have kept a cyber­at­tack on their busi­ness secret. There are sev­er­al rea­sons why they have remained silent and did­n’t report it, but it is nec­es­sary – for everyone’s sake – to be hon­est and open about attacks in order to fend off future threats.

The lack of report­ing is appar­ent due, in large part, to sheer embar­rass­ment; no one likes admit­ting to a mis­take. Sec­ond, those in charge might want to mit­i­gate legal expo­sure from stake­hold­ers in the event that a sig­nif­i­cant data breach results in either a series of loss­es or a class-action law­suit.

Addi­tion­al­ly, there are impli­ca­tions for a busi­ness’ brand and rep­u­ta­tion to con­sid­er. This is all on top of the rev­enue loss­es and oper­at­ing expens­es aris­ing from ran­somware, which make up most of these attacks today.

Those fac­ing the high­est lev­els of risk are small and medi­um enter­pris­es (SMEs) and small office/home offices (SOHOs), as they usu­al­ly don’t have access to, or bud­get for, suf­fi­cient IT sup­port. SMEs and SOHOs are the low-hang­ing fruit for cyber­crim­i­nals. With so many with­in easy reach it doesn’t make sense for crim­i­nals to tar­get the larg­er, bet­ter-defend­ed play­ers.
Bear­ing this in mind, the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors need to col­lab­o­rate and come up with solu­tions to this explod­ing chal­lenge, and SMEs and SOHOs have to get the sup­port they require to sur­vive in the cyber­war. Sim­ple solu­tions such as pass­word secu­ri­ty sys­tems and dark web scan­ning can be eas­i­ly imple­ment­ed, regard­less of the size of the busi­ness.

Don’t be an easy target: fight back against invisible enemies

Cyber­crim­i­nals are incred­i­bly smart, well-financed – some­times by state spon­sors – and can be entre­pre­neur­ial and col­lab­o­ra­tive. There is not much dif­fer­ence between the most suc­cess­ful and tremen­dous­ly impres­sive cyber­crime com­pa­nies and those that oper­ate legal­ly in the pri­vate sec­tor; both earn bil­lions of dol­lars a year. But cyber­crim­i­nals are able to work togeth­er and stay a step ahead of those busi­ness­es, putting pres­sure on the frag­ment­ed defense mech­a­nisms in place.

The dark web is where the cyber­crim­i­nals oper­ate, and in that encrypt­ed ecosys­tem they can access over 20 bil­lion stolen cor­rect com­bi­na­tions of user­names and pass­words – also known as login pairs. More than 80% of data breach­es are the result of pass­word secu­ri­ty issues. Most peo­ple (60%) reuse weak pass­words on mul­ti­ple apps and web­sites, giv­ing cyber­crim­i­nals an oppor­tu­ni­ty to exploit.

Pass­word man­age­ment plat­forms – such as Keep­er Security’s – that cre­ate high-strength, ran­dom pass­words for every web­site appli­ca­tion sys­tem are imper­a­tive for busi­ness­es. Oth­er assets, like dark web mon­i­tor­ing tools, can detect when cre­den­tials float­ing around on the dark web match some­thing on your net­work, allow­ing vul­ner­a­ble pass­words to be flagged and changed.

The 2021 Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Cen­sus Report indi­cates that almost one-third (31%) of UK busi­ness­es will hold the chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer direct­ly respon­si­ble for a suc­cess­ful cyber­at­tack on their organ­i­sa­tion.

But blam­ing the CTO is inef­fec­tive. To stand the best chance of sur­vival in the rag­ing cyber­war, you need every­one doing their bit. There has to be c‑suite buy-in and excel­lent cyber hygiene across the whole organ­i­sa­tion. Fight­ing togeth­er is the only viable option in 2021.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it https://keeper.io/protect

Five steps to boost your cybersecurity

1.Take account­abil­i­ty – from the top down
Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of every­one in an organ­i­sa­tion, not just the chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer or chief infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty offi­cer or even the IT depart­ment. It requires buy-in from the board and busi­ness lead­ers, and cyber hygiene must be test­ed and improved reg­u­lar­ly.

2. A pass­word man­age­ment plat­form is essen­tial
Giv­en that weak pass­words are by far the num­ber one rea­son data breach­es occur, a pass­word man­ag­er – such as Keep­er Secu­ri­ty – will imme­di­ate­ly improve your cyber­se­cu­ri­ty.

3. Deploy a data breach tool
In addi­tion to a pass­word man­ag­er, a data breach tool enables busi­ness­es to know when a cre­den­tial is com­pro­mised on the dark web, enabling them to change the vul­ner­a­ble pass­word before it’s too late.

4. Using a VPN is essen­tial when work­ing remote­ly
The rise of home work­ing in the last year has led to poor cyber hygiene. As a bare min­i­mum, all employ­ees should use a vir­tu­al pri­vate net­work.

5. Be open and share knowl­edge
Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty soft­ware alone is not enough in this cyber­war: busi­ness lead­ers need to change their mind­sets and keep abreast of evolv­ing threats. A spir­it of open­ness and col­lab­o­ra­tion will help boost cyber­se­cu­ri­ty against crim­i­nals, who are out­pac­ing com­pa­nies in terms of embrac­ing tech­nol­o­gy and work­ing togeth­er.

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