Why organized crime might be your biggest expense in the coming years
The damages to businesses for cyber crimes is expected to reach $6 trillion by 2021, doubling the $3 trillion it cost businesses in 2015. If that figure shocks you it’s because you’re not paying attention. Data breaches are very costly and they occur very frequently. Yet many businesses aren’t doing enough to prepare for data breaches and are barely doing anything to prevent them.
Every time you look at the news there seems to be another data breach. Oftentimes things like financial records are targeted, as these are the things that can most easily lead to profit for cybercriminals. We’ve seen this in major corporate data breaches like Target, Home Depot, and Taco Bell. But other times things like health or other personal records are targeted, which can often be used to gain access to even more highly sensitive data.
Cybercriminals are often affiliated with organized crime. In fact, 80% of cybercriminals are affiliated with organized crime. This is way bigger than the mob shaking your business down for protection money. Cyber Crime can happen anywhere and oftentimes you can’t see where it’s coming from and who is perpetuating it.
Threats come from every direction – from employees who are lax with their password hygiene to third party vendors who leave gaping holes in your company’s security. Hackers are always ready and waiting to take advantage of any weakness they find in your company’s security. Even spear phishing is often used to target high level individuals with the express purpose of gaining access to the company network by learning passwords and other personal information.
One of the best things you can do to save your company’s precious information is to segment your network. Only giving access to parts of the network that are completely necessary can safeguard sensitive information that would otherwise be exposed by careless employees and vendors.
Firewalls protect sensitive data and only the highest trained employees would have access to those areas of the network. When combined with strict security measures like password rules it will help to prevent data breaches from becoming too serious and ruining your business.
But maintaining these systems can be difficult, especially if you don’t have a full-time IT team. Fortunately this is something you can use a third party for. Learn more about network segmentation from this infographic. Are you doing everything you can to protect your network from costly business-destroying data breaches?
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