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Cybersecurity is a topic of discussion for all companies nowadays. It is something that all businesses need to take seriously, no matter how big or small, and irrespective of what industry they operate in. No organization is immune to the threat of a security breach. The statistics make worrying reading. 81 percent of large organizations experienced a security breach, according to the Information Security Breaches Survey conducted by PWC.
A lot of people have the misconception that attackers are only interested in big businesses, but that is definitely not the case, as the survey also revealed that 60 percent of small businesses were victims of cyber security breaches as well. Therefore, to say a data breach could be devastating to your company is an understatement, and this only looks at the financial impact. There are many other damages that will undoubtedly be experienced.
This is why it is important to look at different ways to enhance the security of your business. There are so many ways that you can go about it. This includes opting for a cheap VPS, using a firewall, implementing two-factor authentication, and making sure that your network is segmented properly.
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Devastating Cyber Security Breaches
Unfortunately, you only have to turn on the news or look on the Internet to hear stories about cyber security breaches. In 2011, British regulators had a role to play when it came to Sony’s PlayStation Network and their failure to protect users from their personal details being leaked. The company was fined £250,00 because the information was stolen from the accounts for approximately 100 million users. The widespread attack saw customer addresses, account names, customer names, and bank account numbers being stolen. The hackers exploited a weakness in the network, where they inundated it with information requests as part of the rise of many distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that occurred around that period.
A few years ago, supermarket company Morrisons fell victim to an insider attack, as an employee was arrested as the result of a data breach that involved the details of 100,000 staff. The individual exposed the bank account details, addresses, and names of employees. Heartland Payment Systems also suffered one of the biggest breaches of our time, with more than 134 million credit cards exposed! The company had to pay approximately $145 million in compensation.
Mobile phone provider Orange has also suffered several data breaches. Their most recent one impacted upon more than one million people. Again, data was stolen, including names, mobile numbers, landline numbers, and email addresses. A month later, British Gas was the victim of a cyber security attack. Criminals took over the company’s Twitter account and pointed customers towards phishing websites. The gambling company, Paddy Power, was also hacked a couple of years ago – with almost 650,000 customer’s records stolen. You begin to see the importance of security testing to avert such threats.
Dianna Ranere