The threat landscape in this digital era keeps some chief information officers up at night–and for good reason.
Companies realize that the financial and reputational costs stemming from a successful cyberattack can be insurmountable. Do you know how to keep your business safe? You need to know what cybersecurity threats pose the most risk and then do whatever’s necessary to avoid becoming a victim.
Here’s a look at five cybersecurity issues you need to know about.
1. Ransomware
According to Statista, the yearly share of ransomware attacks experienced by organizations globally has been increasing since 2018, peaking last year at 68.5%. If your business is victimized by ransomware, the potential ransom payout amount is only one part of the problem. There’s also the hit to your corporate reputation, productivity loss, and system downtime.
In fact, some companies don’t survive ransomware attacks. You can help your company by protecting and backing up files, creating incident response plans, training your staff to avoid risky online behavior, keeping your company’s operating systems and applications up to date, and reviewing port settings.
2. Phishing
According to one report, more than half of IT decision-makers admit that phishing attacks are a main security concern. In fact, more than eight in 10 organizations last year reported encountering phishing attacks, and another 6 billion such attacks are expected to happen this year.
Phishing is a social engineering tactic where an attacker sends an ill-intentioned message to trick the recipient into providing confidential information. One way you can protect your company is by training your staff to know what phishing attacks are, understand what they look like, avoid opening attachments or providing information to suspicious sources, and report any potential incidents to your IT team.
3. Improper Patch Management
Another risk your company needs to look for is improper patch management. If you have software with vulnerabilities, you can bet that hackers will find them and seek to exploit them to their own advantage.
That’s one reason it’s important to adopt a strong path management strategy so vulnerabilities can be fixed pronto. If you have a haphazard stragegy or only patch vulnerabilities every now and again instead of when patches become available, you’ll leave a gaping hole in your system that can be penetrated.
And, again, hackers will see vulnerabilities as an invitation to take advantage of your business.
4. IoT Attacks
The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing fast. And this growth presents some inherent risks. If hackers gain control of IoT internet-connected routers, computers, and equipment, they can potentially leverage this control to overload networks and gain unauthorized access to confidential information. If your staff uses these types of devices, you need to ensure that they’re being used properly and have the right security protocols in place.
5. Shortage of Cybersecurity Professionals
Did you know there’s a shortage of 3 million cybersecurity professionals worldwide? So says the World Economic Forum. You’ll need to assess your company’s needs on this critical front critically. You might want to outsource IT services if you don’t have cybersecurity experts or find that your current team is undermanned.
You can outsource as much, or as little, of your critical IT services needs to stay ahead of cyberthreats. Many companies find that it’s cost-effective to outsource IT services.
As you can see, there are some severe threats your business needs to be on the lookout for. But it’s always better to prevent problems rather than respond to problems that have already occurred.
With the right strategy and the right cybersecurity professionals on your team, you’ll be able to deal with cyber issues that rear their ugly heads regularly.
