As we are making the push past the halfway mark for 2017, some say we are beginning a slight decline when it comes to cybersecurity. Less security in the sense that there is an increasing number of people who are able to hack into personal information like banking statements, social media accounts, phone records etc. These “Hackers” are learning more and more advanced ways to bypass firewalls, elude anti-spyware, and are even capable of planting viruses, worms and Trojan horses. Like technology, things adapt, grow, develop and get better in the foreseeable future, however, when we discuss cybersecurity, we can not necessarily say the same. There often tends to be a new cybersecurity reports throughout the year with the latest report coming from Cisco. Reports shows that things are not necessarily getting better in the cybersecurity world. As of late, threats have been accelerating at an alarming rate, and many companies are not taking them seriously. As reported by Rob Endele, spam in recent years is at an increased level, up 65%. Over these past few years much of the spam was at an all time low. Out of that 65% increase 8% is malicious. Threats now are more so about the theft, and benefiting from stealing from companies in order to resell. Attackers have transitioned from attacking users PC’s to stealing passwords and ID’s that can be used to access personal and secure data. Attackers are on the update. Many attackers are effectively finding out which malware is no longer working and updating it. While detection time has has gotten better, there is little reason to celebrate because attack speed and the effectiveness of attacks is increasing even more quickly.
More than two-thirds of those surveyed believe their security system and tools are extremely effective, however, about 40 percent of the alerts these systems receive are never investigated. Of the 56 percent that are investigated, more than one in four are legitimate attack, and more than half of these are not fixed. A lot of companies systems do not get the alerts, which suggests that their security solutions are not working properly. With all that being said, there are many recommendations that can help a company’s security system. The majority of companies need to take the next step in their security system and take these issues far more seriously than they currently appear to be doing. Look into how hackers manage to slip back door into secure areas online, and work backwards on being able to make sure it can not happen to anyone. Some people refuse to heed the warnings of what cybersecurity analysts have to say. There are always people and companies who do not take it this matter in full understanding, by not paying attention, you leave yourself vulnerable and susceptible to being breached. For example, Rob Endele held a security showcase for IBM. They made the system as secure as possible yet it was still breached because the paid attacker got in through a trusted link by way of poorly secured vendor. If you aren’t auditing your vendors’ security preparedness and limiting their access, you are just as likely to suffer a breach as the folks that aren’t taking all of this as seriously as need be.