Cyber attacks pose a great danger to organizations big and small. Victims are on the news reporting what security breaches have done to their business – some incidents’ impact are colossal. Unfortunately, not many organizations are taking serious action on how to prevent cyber attacks, let alone how to deal with them when they happen.
How dangerous are cyber attacks?
Here’s an eye opener figure: A whopping 75 percent of U.S. organizations are not prepared to respond to a cyber attack. I suspect similar figure – or even worse – is true for organizations in other countries.
Now let’s rub salt into the open wound: There is a 64 percent increase in cyber security incidents in 2015 compared to last year’s number. With the lack of preparation and the increase of cyber attack intensity, we should logically be worried. Very worried.
The scale of cyber attacks is no joke. Need a couple of prominent examples? Try these:
- Home Depot: 56 million customer credit card numbers were exposed in a data breach in September 2014.
- J.P. Morgan: 76 million of clients have their personal information exposed in a July 2014 attack.
I could go on and on with more scary data breach stories, but you get the point. Some incidents are massive, impacting everyone from clients to partners – and, of course, your organizations’ bottom line.
But why is there a lack of preparation, given the scale of cyber attacks? There are many explanations, but this figure alone explains it all: 58 percent of boards are not actively preparing for Internet security breach.
I don’t know about you, but if decision makers are not focusing the organizations’ effort in dealing with cyber attacks and their incidents, security breach – followed by the devastating aftermath – is nearly a foregone conclusion.
Prioritize on cyber security
So, I implore you to start to get serious about cyber security – or else. Now, if you’re wise enough to follow my suggestion, there are things that you can do to prevent cyber attacks and minimize the impact of the aftermath:
- Plan for disaster recovery: Only 37 percent of organizations have a cyber incident response plan. This indicates that planning for disaster recovery is a must.
- Hire the right employees: Instead of having your existing IT team to deal with cyber attacks, you should consider hiring a specialist.
- Adopt cutting-edge technology: Biometrics, multi-factor, etc. – you should implement advanced authentication to thwart most of the cyber attacks.
- Communicate with the whole team: Your employees should be aware of the danger of a cyber attack, and understand the steps to do when it happen.
You can learn more about keeping your company secure from this infographic published by DHR International:
