Undermining Cyber Attack In Workplace
“Every minute, we are seeing about half a million attack attempts that are happening in cyber space” – Derek Manky, Fortinet Global Security Strategist
Cyber attacks have proven to be a medium for hackers and state-sponsored organisations seeking to level the playing field with competitors. While the digital age has brought about numerous benefits and conveniences to organisations in terms of operations and processes, it also exposed them to the threat of fraud or intellectual property theft. Cyber threats have piled a hefty cost of US $5 trillion annually, and a good 90-95% of them begins with a phishing email.
In an environment that is highly driven by digital technologies and information, cyber threat management has become a fundamental part of doing business, and is more than just a strategic imperative. Although the threat of cyber attacks is apparent, many organisations are undermining the potential of being hit by one.
“… results indicated that more than 91% of high vulnerable board members said that they can’t read a cyber security report and are not prepared to handle a major attack.” – A study conducted by Tanium in partnership with NASDAQ [1].
In the study, it was found that much of the C-suite leaders, board members and executives are not equipped with the knowledge to handle customer data, and much of this responsibility falls into the hands of the IT department and Chief Information Security Officer. Many personnel in the management have undermine the extent of cyber attacks can damage their organisation processes and operations. This has resulted in a less than desired amount of investment organisation is willing to put into toughening their cyber security system. Bigger and older companies are still running on old IT infrastructures that rely on outdated and unsupported software, putting them in favour of a cyber attacks.
While the management ought to step up more in building stronger defences for its organisation cyber security, employees should not be left out in the prevention of cyber attacks. Much unlikely as it seems, employees are often the greatest cyber security threat to an organisation, e.g. opening malware from an email, use of weak passwords, information leaks with intent or not. Organisations are seeing little progress in their prevention of cyber attacks because they have neglected that the weakest link in the information security chain is the employees who have access to the organisation systems.
The ideal solution to combat cyber threats will be to implement a balanced security approach that recognises the network security strengths as well as its limitations, automates security enforcement as much as possible, and, improves identity and access management processes to reduce employee errors and ultimately security breach incidents. It is necessary for both the employees and the management to go through effective cyber security training, to increase the awareness of cyber security risks and the consequences they will potentially face, should they violate any organisation policy that will put the organisation at risk of an attack.
Cyber Security for Non-Technical Personnel is a course that takes participants through a journey of hacking, vulnerabilities, data breaches, etc. Participants will examine the various ways in which hackers can potentially conduct cyber attacks on organisation and individual. They will also be taught how to set up defences against attacks using the principles of Security Information and Event Management. All the knowledge obtained can then be applicable to the operations and processes of their organisation. For more information, please visit us at http://www.opuskinetic.com/training or contact us at info@opuskinetic.com
Opus Kinetic believes that people are why organisations are successful, and giving people the knowledge to perform well at their job is integral for success. We pride ourselves as the premier provider of knowledge, offering acclaimed in-house training, leadership training courses, oil and gas training courses, courses that target health safety and environment, etc. Our training courses are well researched and updated with the latest industry trends. For more information on our professional training programs, you can visit us at http://www.opuskinetic.com/training.
[1] NSADAQ is an American stock exchange