For decades, companies spent most of their IT security resources on technologies and strategies designed to keep intruders out of their networks. The 2020 SolarWinds hack has inspired a shift in that philosophy, with increased emphasis on detecting and responding to threats that have already penetrated perimeter defenses.
The past two years have been great for business — if you’re in the cybercrime business. Economists say cybercrime now generates at least $1.5 trillion in revenues every year, roughly equal to the annual GDP of Russia. It is now more profitable than the global trade of all major illegal drugs combined.
Co-managed support services help relieve the strain on overextended internal IT teams.
The largest enterprise organizations often have the necessary resources to fully staff an in-house IT department. Meanwhile, small businesses with tight budgets usually find it more cost-efficient to outsource IT services to a third-party provider.
Multifactor authentication goes to extra lengths to improve security.
Hackers don’t usually try to force their way into corporate networks by defeating cyber defenses. Instead, they’re more likely to gain entry using legitimate user credentials.
According to the Verizon 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report, 61 percent of security breaches involved credential abuse.
As organizations of all sizes continue to move more data and workloads to the cloud, most are facing significant new security challenges. Ninety-eight percent of companies surveyed recently by IDC said they experienced at least one cloud data breach within the previous 18 months, with 67 percent reporting three or more such incidents.
Comfy clothes. No traffic jams. Fewer interruptions. Flexible schedule. Stocked refrigerator. These are some of the reasons why most people say they’ve enjoyed the remote-work experience, have remained productive and would like to continue working from home, at least on a part-time basis.
The ability to deliver advanced communication and collaboration services to increasingly distributed workforces is driving rapid growth of cloud-delivered unified communications solutions. Analysts with Metrigy predict that 70 percent of businesses will be using UC-as-a-Service within two years.
Odd as it may seem now, just a few years ago business leaders debated whether employees should be allowed to use mobile phones for work. Many worried that the practice would reduce productivity, increase stress and create potential security risks.
That debate is over.
Successful organizations have always depended upon groups of people working together to maximize efficiency and solve complex problems. Team dynamics help create structure, encourage creativity, foster innovation and drive productivity. Research by Frost & Sullivan suggests that as much as a third of a typical company’s productivity can be traced directly to team collaboration efforts.
Defense-in-depth strategy can help organizations counter surging levels of cybercrime.
Although exact figures won’t be tallied for another couple of months, most security analysts expect 2021 to rank as perhaps the worst year ever for cybercrime. With data breaches, ransomware attacks, phishing scams and malware infections all increasing at a record pace, global damages from cybercrime are expected to reach more than $6 trillion by the end of the year — six times more than in 2020.
Don’t expect cybercriminals to take a vacation in 2022.
“The sophistication and scale of cyberattacks will continue to break records, and we can expect a huge increase in the number of ransomware and mobile attacks,” said Maya Horowitz, VP of Research at Check Point Software.
