A key factor in establishing trust is the presence of a Security Operations Center (SOC). The SOC is charged with monitoring and protecting many assets, such as intellectual property, personnel data, business systems and brand integrity.
From elections to North Korean nuclear threats and missile launches, it appears that cyber actors are using geopolitical events to achieve cyber activism and other goals.
2017 illustrated a significantly lower barrier-of-entry to the world of cybercrime with the emergence of malware-as-a-service, with user profile names and credit card numbers readily available on the Dark Web and distribution of 20,000 messages for just $40.
Today, cyber breaches cost the U.S. more than $100 billion a year. While organizations are actively procuring new cybersecurity technology, they’re not investing enough in people, skills and talent. And according to ISACA, a non-profit information security advocacy group, a global shortage of two million cybersecurity professionals is expected by 2019.
As cybersecurity continues to become more complex and harder to manage, the role of security operations for organizations is also shifting across the board. Long gone are the days where firewalls or intrusion detection systems (IDS) could keep adversaries outside the perimeter. Instead, we are seeing increases in both size and frequency of attacks leading to more pronounced impacts to the business.
Some of the most basic tenets of password account management have failed, leaving us with a dreadful combination of poor user experience and inadequate security.
Insurance has long existed as a mechanism for the transferal of risk to a third party, particularly for those risks that fall outside of an organization’s direct control. However, as the threats we face evolve so must the insurance products that we purchase. Recently, the most significant dangers that have come to light and threatened to destroy a company overnight have emerged within the cybersecurity sphere. This has fueled the growing interest and appetite for cyber liability insurance.
As ransomware continues to gain notoriety, cybercriminals are looking for more ways to get the most out of the malware that they develop. Similarly, other bad actors who may lack the necessary skills to develop malware themselves are looking for a way to get in on the action. This has led to an increase in ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS), a practice in which cybercriminals put their ransomware up for sale, where it is purchased and leveraged by other criminals who are technically unable to develop their own variants.
With dozens of breaches and millions left violated, 2017 has witnessed a historic amount of hacking. This year has been stained with numerous hacking incidents, including WannaCry, Petya and Cloudbleed. Of these many cases, the Equifax data breach can be crowned the most significant hack of the year, having exposed the personal data of nearly 148 million people.
