Cybersecurity Awareness

October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month! Its mission – to educate the public on the safe, secure use of the internet and our shared global digital assets through the STOP. THINK. CONNECT. campaign.

Why should you care? Because data in and of itself is now viewed by many businesses as a new raw material. As such, securing company information from threats – from both within and without - is critical to the health and future of your company.

Users are demanding that the companies allow them to conduct business anytime, anywhere, through a wide variety of mobile computing devices. As companies succumb to these demands, they find themselves having to support multiple equipment with multiple operating systems, all of which increases the risk to data through targeted attacks such as the Aurora, Stuxnet and Zeus “viruses.” Traditional firewall and proxy security technologies are just not equipped to handle sophisticated threats delivered through what appear to be legitimate websites – Google - and spread rapidly though social media.

Verizon issues an annual Data Breach Investigations Report. In its 2011 report, the top four threat events involve external agents hacking and installing malware to compromise the confidentiality and integrity of servers, regardless of industry or business size. A 2010 survey conducted by CSO Magazine and Deloitte reported that 7 in 10 security incidents go unreported with some companies never even being aware they have been compromised. And 43 percent of the breaches reported in the CSO/Deloitte survey, involved data not known to have existed on the affected equipment, equipment with unknown network connections or accessibility and unknown user accounts or privileges.

IT practices, policies, technologies and initiatives that extend not just between the data center and end user workspace but also to customers, suppliers and business partners are part of the picture. But throwing new and enhanced products to meet each new threat is not the answer. Doing enterprise data protection right necessitates development and implementation of a strong, proactive enterprise-wide information security program encompassing governance, policies and standards, workforce awareness and training.

Next time – Cybersecurity Awareness Part Deux: Getting Your CEO’s Attention

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