No business is immune from a cyberattack. Staying up-to-date on industry trends and insights from security professionals is key to understanding where your defenses need to improve. This year’s Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) contained almost 2,000 confirmed data breaches and more than 42,000 security incidents, both of which are expected to increase next year. We’ve pulled the top trends from this 75-page report so you can stay up-to-date on the most critical insights:
- Your employees are your biggest risk, but can also be your best defense. Accidental or purposeful internal actions can put your organization at risk. The most popular cause of cyberattacks is still employees clicking on links or downloading malicious content. Businesses would benefit from focusing on investing in employee education to build up the strength of their human firewall and bring down their risk factors.
- Password management is critical. Hacking attempts through weak passwords have increased from 63% to 80% in the past year. Your IT team would benefit from requiring all users to change their passwords every 30, 60, or 90 days, and implementing two-factor authentication for access to critical data. Ensure your IT department or MSP is following best practices when it comes to security with a security gap assessment, which looks at password policies and enforcement as well as 122 other areas of your business and provides recommendations.
- Phishing attempts are becoming more sophisticated. The GoogleDocs cybercrime was one of the first attacks to hit so many users at so many different times in a coordinated strike. However, phishing attacks will only get smarter over time, as they rarely make the same attempt twice. A security team would benefit from being able to react in real-time to prevent users from opening malicious downloads.
- Ransomware incidents increase by 50%. Jumping from the 22nd most popular choice of malware to the 5th, this change implies that hackers are shifting more towards organized attacks on vulnerable organizations rather than random individual users. The targets of these attacks are typically not prepared for a ransomware hit and choose instead to pay the price of releasing their data rather than implementing a protective system, such as remote managed backups, to render the hacker powerless. WannaCry and the ransomware attacks that follow are not listed in this report-- evidence that these attempts will continue to become more sophisticated.
- The healthcare industry is currently one of the most targeted industry. This year’s security breach report marked the first year where attacks were sorted by industry. The data reflects that healthcare businesses, from major hospitals to six-person dental offices, accounted for 15% of the reported data breaches. No matter your industry, it is imperative that your client information cannot be breached; the amount of trust that will be lost in your business might cost more than paying a ransom to get it back, but there are steps you can take now to prevent anything from happening.
The only difference between an inconvenience and a disaster is how quickly an organization can detect and respond to an incident. Give your business the advantage to respond in real-time with IT Support Services that include 24x7 data protection. To read the full report by Verizon, click here.