Cybercrime is a significant threat to contemporary businesses

Cybercrime is a significant threat to contemporary businesses


Cybercrime is a significant threat to contemporary businesses. It can lead to disruption of operations, breach of business and customer data, data leaks, and more. In a survey, over two-thirds of the participating businesses had suffered at least one cyberattack, while one-third had experienced the same in the last 12-months.

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The average cost of a data breach for a small-to-medium business is a staggering $149,000. On top of that, 80% of SMBs worry about becoming the target of cybercrime in the next six months.

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Whether governments and businesses are moving to the cloud or smartphones being used to make transactions and share information, users are rightly worried about sensitive information being leaked.

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Additionally, as more and more applications are moving to the cloud, malicious actors are getting better at evading detection by standard security measures and protocols. The act of distributing ransomware and holding sensitive data is increasing as organizational data is going beyond the control of the company.

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Evolving from simple malware, ransomware has become more sophisticated and efficient. Cybercriminals are now targeting the local backups, which baffle the efforts of the security staff to restore encrypted data. Needless to say, this threat is no longer limited to local networks, ransomware attacks remain a problem in a cloud environment.

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Email remains the most favored method of cybercriminals. According to statistics, over 91% of attacks are initiated by email. Common antivirus programs cannot identify the phishing attacks employed by hackers.

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According to hipaajournal.com, Healthcare was the most targeted sector by hackers with 238 data breaches in the first six months of 2021, followed by the finance & insurance sector with 194 reported incidents, then the information sector with 180.

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You may find this entry interesting: This devious cyberattack might be selling off your internet bandwidth


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The report shows there have been significant shifts in data breach trends in 2021. While data breaches have declined globally and have remained fairly constant in the United States, there has been a marked increase in ransomware attacks. Risk-Based Security recorded 352 ransomware attacks in the first 6 months of 2021 and, if that pace continues, the number of attacks will be significantly higher than in 2020.

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Ransomware attacks are extremely costly in healthcare due to the long period of downtime, and without access to medical records, patient safety is put at risk. This is of course known to ransomware gangs. The reliance on access to data and the high cost of downtime increases the probability of the ransom being paid.

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Talking about average ransom payments, it cost $600 million dollars in 2021, which represented an increase of 82%

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What can SOS Support do to help you avoid a cyberattack?

Enterprises should know what data is critical to them. They simply cannot defend what they don’t know they have. That’s why we implement a proper asset management system, that can identify those enterprise assets that hold this critical data.

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Did you know

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Nearly 66% of IT Managers have an incomplete record of their IT assets? Knowing what IT Equipment you have and where is a critical function. We can help with an initial Asset Audit and ongoing Asset List Management.

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Give us a call or send us an email and we can let you know how we can help.