Over 75% of Organizations Are Vulnerable to Hackers, Study Finds

Is your business prepared to handle all kind of online threats? A recent study shows that it probably isn’t. According to the think tank Ponemon Institute, four out of five businesses don’t have the infrastructure or security experts they need to spot and prevent incoming cyber attacks from succeeding. This is a significant statistic that can’t be ignored, especially if you want to secure your business.

Additional findings from the study include:

• Only about 17 percent of respondents claim that they have any sort of process for gathering intelligence about network threats.
• 38 percent of companies don’t have any method of intelligence gathering at all.
• Other companies either have one for specific purposes, or have one that’s not spread out throughout their entire organization.

Regardless, the point stands that not enough is being done to learn about, and prevent, threats from accessing business infrastructures.

The Ponemon Institute claims that businesses are experiencing, on average, at least one or more external cyber attacks every month, and these breaches are costing the businesses about $3.5 million annually.

Your business’ administration should consider whether or not it can afford to become the target of further data breaches. More often than not, we expect the answer to be “no.” Yet, so many businesses refuse to accept that they could become the target of a data breach.

One of the major threats comes from phishing attempts, a strategy used by hackers that tempt email recipients into divulging their personal or organizational credentials. The hackers on the other end of the email will then use these credentials to gain access and control. If people can’t tell the difference between friend and foe, they could potentially invite threats into the network without knowing it.

Here are two strategies we suggest you take into consideration when deciding how to improve your company’s network security:

• Introduce proactive measures: This includes introducing security measures that work for every user accessing your network. Security solutions such as firewalls and antivirus can help you detect and eliminate threats that could potentially cause problems for your organization. Additionally, you should be prepared with other solutions including spam blocking and content filtering to cut down on your employees’ exposure to threats.
• Educate your employees: Your team needs to be aware of security best practices, like password security, how to identify phishing scams, and so on. Security should be a part of company culture, and your team needs to embrace it if you want to keep your data safe.

Macro Systems can be the security professionals you need to keep your systems safe and secure from external threats. To learn more, give us a call at (703) 359-9211.