What is The Greatest Threat to Cybersecurity Today?

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Cybersecurity has become the number one defense mechanism against dangerous cybercriminals, who conduct cybercrime. What is this exactly? Well, cybercrime is what we call crime that is orchestrated in the digital domain e.g. on the internet and towards connected devices and their users. Cybercriminals take advantage of everything from; average internet users who are not aware of cybersecurity, all the way to the largest organizations with the toughest defenses. Why do we mention cybersecurity? This is because cybersecurity is essential for the protection of connected digital devices. In fact, cybersecurity is now a central theme for first-world governments like the United States, Russian, and China. The world’s largest IT companies like IBM, as well as the largest insurers out there such as Allianz constantly create conversation about cybersecurity. They also state that this is the number one global risk at the moment. For instance, political power games are now also based in the digital realm, highlighting just how important digital defense is in today’s age.

What is Cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is the first frontier of defense against intrusions, data breaches, identity theft, and data theft that takes place via connected systems. According to the University of Miami’s website; “Cybersecurity is the body of technologies, practices, and processes designed to secure devices, networks, information, and programs from attacks, unauthorized access, or damage.” More relatable examples of cybersecurity that will be familiar to most people are tools like; VPNs, firewalls, anti-malware, and anti-virus programs. Examples of further cybersecurity tools that are used by an enterprise (business functions) are; hardware firewalls managed security systems and real-time monitoring.

What Are The Biggest Cybersecurity Threats Today?

Cybercrime, or digital crime, is molding the way business is conducted today. It is molding how the entire economy approaches data security and business processes. To put into perspective just how destructive cybercrime is, especially now, for the entire world economy it is sufficient to state the following fact; The official figures on annual losses from cyber security-related incidents vary between $600 billion and $1 trillion. As threat actors release new threats, grow in sophistication, and target an ever-increasing attack surface, the threat of cybercrime is not stabilized at all. Last year, the world experienced (and is still facing the repercussions) a historic cyber-attack, that almost brought down the United States itself. Furthermore, cyber-attacks are not solely hackers disrupting a few files here or there anymore (or as it was in the old days of phone phreaking) but cyber-attacks today transcend into the cyber-physical realm and cause real danger to all of us. What is the cyber-physical realm? This relates to the dangers of having critical infrastructures like transport, gas, or electricity connected to the internet and the consequent ramifications.

The biggest threats to global cybersecurity can be listed as follows;

  • APTs or Advanced Persistent Threat groups backed by nation-state governments
  • Ransomware
  • Phishing
  • Cyber-physical attacks

Sophisticated phishing attacks (social engineering scams and fraud), extremely advanced ransomware attacks, and vulnerability in the IoT or Internet of Things environment are enough to bring entire organizations to the brink of insolvency. Moreover, cybercrime can cause worse things than just business insolvency, they can topple the security of an entire nation leading to the exposure of sensitive data about that nation’s citizens. Evidence of this is the countless mass campaign data breaches such as the 2013 Yahoo breach which led to 3 billion people being affected by cybercrime. Not enough proof? How about the U.S. financial services breaches in 2019 affecting almost 1 billion user records, or the Facebook incident that affected over half a billion people. Let’s also remember that cyber-attacks resulted in disruptions in gas pipelines, even water systems. At the top of the mountain, though, is the fact that nuclear institutions were targeted.

How to Mitigate For Cybersecurity Threats

In the tech world, the term ‘mitigation’ is often used. It is used to describe how to resolve issues in the tech realm. So, how do we mitigate cybersecurity threats like those above?

  • Paying attention to weak passwords, especially when the same passwords are used across multiple accounts
  • Securing remote devices (IoT devices) that are often a cause for data leaks and breaches
  • Making sure that system software is updated/patched to the latest version at all times
  • Using cybersecurity software such as VPNs to ensure an encrypted and safe connection to the internet on all devices at all times
  • Mitigating against insider threats, which means resolving the risk of malicious employees or worse, naive and unaware employees that can risk the system of an entire organization
  • Protecting critical infrastructures that power cities from cyber-attacks with sophisticated real-time monitoring and an educated staff
  • Keeping external (physical) backups of data, without relying too much on the security of the already permeable cloud storage, is fundamental

Final Words

Every organization out there, no matter how tough its defense walls are, is susceptible to a cyber-attack. In fact, it is well-known in the industry that a cyber-attack happens every few seconds. Having proper cybersecurity hygiene, no matter if you are a regular citizen or if you are the largest organization, applies to everyone. Yes, cybercriminals do have preferred targets like celebrities or SMBs (smaller or medium businesses) that they prioritize, but this doesn’t mean that you or your employees should ever be laissez-faire about cybersecurity. It is important not to think that your work or company is not important, and is not going to be targeted by cybercriminals. The best approach to this is to look at building security into every business process from the ground up, assuming that an attack will happen (because it will at some point.)

In the future, cybersecurity threats will evolve, change shape and change their target. As we enter the quantum realm, particularly the space realm, we will see cybercrime flow into these areas. As cybersecurity quickly becomes the number one priority in global defense, it is a fact that much more resources and investments should be placed in this industry than it currently is.

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