Just in 2018, there were 500 million personal records stolen. How many records will be stolen by year’s end? According to the RiskBased Data Breach QuickView Report 2019 Q3, at the end of September, there were 5,183 breaches, exposing 7.9 billion records. Compared to the 2018 Q3 report, the total number of breaches was up 33.3 percent and the total number of records exposed more than doubled, up 112 percent.
Benjamin Franklin once said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” These sage words unfortunately describe the dilemma many companies are facing on a daily basis with increasing frequency. Whether because of a lack of resources to commit to cybersecurity or the C-suite’s reluctance to do things differently, companies are suffering from a rash of bad actors seeking to profit from cyberattacks and the loss of data because of negligent handling by insiders.
There are few industries where the cybersecurity stakes are higher than in the healthcare space, with medical organizations running the risk of life-threatening disruptions at the hands of malicious actors.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has launched Cyber Essentials, an effort to assist small organizations in understanding and addressing cybersecurity risks.