An August article suggested that the due to the large amounts of cyber breaches that have impacted both public and private sectors that have put millions of individuals personal identifiable information at risk, the general attitude toward breaches is becoming more mainstream and accepted. This is an unfortunate state of affairs when instead of compelling organizations to aggressively improve their network security practices, the public writ large is willing to accept credit monitoring for a period of time (usually 1-2 years) as a consolation prize. According to one source, the first half of 2016 has seen 538 breaches identified; 60 percent of businesses losing valuable intellectual property and/or trade secrets; and approximately 13 million records exposed.
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In my previous post on Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) I discussed at least one immediate benefit of CTI as a means of cutting the cost of vulnerability and patch management by potentially obviating the need to trigger a patch management exercise.
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SMBs play a critical role in national economies- as they comprise about 97% of all commercial enterprises. Until very recently SMBs did not consider themselves a prime target of cyber threats and rightly so- all the high-profile hacks were aimed at large enterprise, and it was widely assumed that cybercriminals wouldn’t bother with small stake targets. But, as the economy becomes more connected SMB are taking center stage in cyber activities as well. As SMBs are connected to both customers and larger enterprises and governmental organizations, they now become a compelling target for cybercriminals. In addition, low cost, mass production cyber weapons now make it economically feasible for cyber criminals to successfully target SMBs and even individuals. Of these, Ransomware has one of the highest return-on-investments ratio for criminals, regardless of the victim’s occupation or annual turnover.
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