Ransomware – a cyberattack in which attackers hijack computer systems and demand payment to release them – has skyrocketed from a relative rarity a few years ago to the single biggest type of cybercrime today. And there is no end in sight to its growth trajectory. Last year, 2,354 American government entities, healthcare organizations and schools were the victims of ransomware attacks. The average ransomware payout swelled to $178,000 in the first half of 2020, up from $112,000 a year ago, according to ransomware incident response firm Coveware, and few clandestine culprits were caught.
For years, there has been optimistic talk that drones – the popular name for UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) – would become ubiquitous and used for security purposes. And now, it’s happening. The drone-industry is becoming an increasingly promising technology-intensive industry, one that will employ far more workers than it does today while enhancing the efficiency and security of a variety of businesses.
Is your company’s cybersecurity policy as effective as it should be amid these tumultuous times? And if you’re not an employee but the owner of a small business – typically someone with much less sophisticated cybersecurity protection – how does your online security stack up? The answer: Cybersecurity has improved, but markedly more has to be done to secure networks in 2021, the second year of the pandemic, as the number of cyberattacks has become staggering.
The role of the chief information security officer – or CISO for short – is to understand a corporation’s cyber threat landscape and know where vulnerabilities lie. And given the relentless increase in sophisticated hacking, their clout and importance to the CEO and Board is increasing exponentially.
