When asked seven questions related to cybersecurity during an AARP survey, 45 percent of respondents (aged 18 and older) failed the quiz, answering just four or fewer questions correctly.
For educational institutions, it may seem like there are never enough resources to cover all of the risks, incidents or areas of a campus. However, by partnering with police and other first responders, school security leaders can gain additional expertise, local risk updates and even force multipliers.
For a long time now, people (employees, users) have been touted as ‘the weakest link’ because of the tendency to make mistakes or try to bypass cumbersome processes, with no malicious or criminal intent in mind,” says Anthony Lim, Senior Cybersecurity Advisor, Asia Pacific, for Frost & Sullivan and Vice-Chair for (ISC)2 Application Security Advisor Council.
Cyber breaches knows no boundaries and doesn’t discriminate based on business size. For example, a study by the National Cyber Security Alliance shows that even though 66 percent of the small businesses surveyed relied on the Internet on a daily basis and 69 percent handled sensitive data, only 23 percent had a written policy and procedure Internet security guide for their employees. Only 37 percent provided Internet safety training to their employees, and only 50 percent had a cybersecurity plan to keep their business secure.
Those of the Millennial Generation (born between 1980 and early 2000s) have upped their game to keep private information safe, but while they show a keen interest in cybersecurity careers, they don’t know exactly what that entails.
Many organizations protect their cyber infrastructure by looking inward, focusing on their own networks and systems. They dedicate themselves to reducing the attack surface, assessing their vulnerabilities, and conducting system patching – all to continuously monitor their own networks.
If you’re not convinced of the impact data breaches have on business success yet, be aware that 51 percent of consumers will take their business elsewhere after their retailer, bank or service provider suffers a breach that compromises personal information, including addresses, Social Security numbers and credit card details, according to a HyTrust Inc. poll. For retailers focusing on the powerful 35-44 age range demographic, that number jumps to 60.2 percent.
There is a common plot line that underlies most of the breach stories in the news. Software written by bad guys gets into places on the corporate network where it shouldn’t be. It looks around, finds vulnerable systems, grabs valuable data and transmits it off the network. The term most commonly used to describe this behavior is Advanced Persistent Threat (APT).
