Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay Ransomware attacks do not necessarily end with the payment despite the huge sum of money involved, there are potential risks attached to the attacks. A session at Gartner’s Security & Risk Management Summit has revealed that the average cost of a ransomware payment in Q1 2020 was $178,254. While the amount is on the high side, you should know that the downtime cost due to any attack was not taken into consideration. Depending on the size of your business and especially if it’s a midsize company, there are chances that you’ll not be getting all of your encrypted data back after you might have paid for the ransomware attack, the session went on to divulge. Paul Furtado, a senior director and analyst of MSE security at Gartner, was reported to have observed that “What we see is that about 4% of the data is non-recoverable.” What this boils down to is that you have lost both ways. You have paid the ransom demanded but your data has been compromised and tampered with. It dawns on you that the guys you are dealing with don’t have an iota of good intention for you and your business. Another thing…
Tag: malware
Coronavirus: Where The World Got it All Wrong
Image by cromaconceptovisual from Pixabay Coronavirus has succeeded in exposing inadequacies and shortcomings in our daily lives. As a result of the inadequacies, billions of people worldwide were under lockdown, thousands have died, and more are still dying. Governments, businesses, and individuals have been thrown into confusion, facing an uncertain economic future. The world, whether developing or developed, was completely unprepared for COVID-19 despite our technological advancements in the areas of AI and machine learning, hence, we are suffering the consequences direly. The coronavirus pandemic also exposed our ill-preparedness in how we have been handling our supply chains as well as security and privacy. A rundown of the following three very important sectors will bring to light where we failed and also a pointer as to what needs to be done since this may not be the last time we will be facing viral diseases. Technological advancement BlueDot, an artificial intelligence company, was able to notice that something ominous was in the offing and, therefore, went ahead to alert the world of a cluster of “unusual pneumonia” cases occurring around a market in Wuhan, China, about the midnight of December 30, 2019. The company likened the symptoms to those of the SARS, an…
Cybersecurity: How the “New Normal” Can Impact Your Business
Image by Katie White from Pixabay With attempts at easing lockdowns globally and an envisaged victory over the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s proper to take into cognizance the cybersecurity impact on your business. Expectations are rife that after the victory the world is heading into a “new normal” in the way society will be organized and the way business will be conducted. While the main preoccupation of individuals as the COVID-19 pandemic raged on has been how to protect themselves and their families from the virus and how to hold on to their jobs, for business owners, it has been a different ball game altogether. You must have focused on how to beat the pandemic without doing irreversible damage to your economy in the process. This could have led you to take all sorts of decisions that included remote working, telemedicine, outsourcing, and online marketing. All these measures taken to sustain the life of your business are in order, but you probably didn’t take the cybersecurity risks involved into consideration. As the world is grappling and fighting to overcome the pandemic, it’s expected that a “new normal” way of conducting businesses and even living, will be the order of the day. Measures such as…
How to Best Secure Data at Rest, in Use, and in Transit in the COVID-19 Era
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Taking into consideration that internal and external cyber threats are on the rise especially with this COVID-19 pandemic, it’s necessary for you to put all measures in place to adequately protect your data at rest, in use, and in transit. The world has got to a situation where businesses depend on data to carry out transactions. Ordinarily, the best and safest option would have been not having any data, but this is not tenable in the technology-based world we are living in. It, therefore, becomes a very important task for your IT team to come up with hardcore strategies that will ensure your data, whether at rest, in use, or in transit is secured. Cybercriminals set out to hurt your business through information theft and whether you want to believe it or not, the consequences of information theft can be utterly destructive. It’s, therefore, very important for the survival of your business, that you pay attention to how your sensitive information can be protected. Once your information has been stolen, you should gear up for identity theft. The information that has been stolen can be used for corporate or even government espionage as well as a lure…