There’s a term often used in sales; its known as FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). The basic idea is to present a set of statistics that are so terrifying that they compel a reader to action. So here goes:
- According to the BBC 55% of SMBs faced a cyber-attack in 2019 (up from 40% the previous year), meaning that one SMB in the UK is successfully hacked every 19 seconds
- Thirty-seven percent of UK companies have reported a data breach incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the past 12 months
- A new malware strain is discovered every 4.2 seconds
Terrified? Probably not; but hopefully curious?
Cyber threats have been around since the 1980s, but the game has changed; it’s no longer students in bedrooms causing mischief, this is a multi billion pound industry that is attracting the best and worst people from the tech industry. The latest generation of threats are known as Gen-V (Gen-VI is just around the corner) – these are defined as being multi-vector, polymorphic attacks. But what does that mean?
In simple terms, multi-vector means that multiple attack surfaces are exploited, for example: data centre, endpoint, cloud services and mobile. Polymorphic means that the threat can adapt and change its profile, taking many different forms; making it difficult to identify.
Traditional cyber defences tend to be signature based (i.e. what they ‘look’ like). That was fine for previous generations of threats; however, today’s AI powered threats are adaptive, constantly changing their ‘signature’ and requiring the detection of their ‘behaviour’ more than their ‘signature’.
This level of sophistication means that, in Europe, Attacker Dwell Time (the time to detection) is around 6 months.
Worse still; the upcoming introduction version 1.3 of the TLS encryption protocol (used by all commercial Internet sites) means that malware will be virtually impossible to spot in transit; only becoming detectable when it launches its intended attack.
When and not if the worst happens, and your IT services have been rendered inoperable (think WannaCry and CryptoLocker); the time taken to recover your services; and the point in time to which you can recover them can be measured in days, if not weeks.
Boston University present another disturbing statistic: some 60% of commercial organisations go out of business following a significant cyber security incident.
Of the remaining 40%; the attack will result in a loss of profitability; reputational damage and exposure to legal action from the likes of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
Our Security & Continuity Solutions provide protection and recovery from today’s, and tomorrow’s, ever-evolving cyber security threat landscape; ensuring that your organisation can take advantage of the latest innovations without being exposed to the latest threats.
To bring it all together we provide first class consultancy services to ensure that your solution is designed specifically to meet your security needs; and continues to evolve as your needs evolve over the years.
And to keep it all running smoothly we provide our String 365 Managed Services that allow your organisation to focus on what it does best; while we take care of the IT stuff.
