Cybercrime, or the hacking business, has reached an unprecedented level. The WannaCry ransomware cyberattack that struck 150 countries in 2017 followed by Petya and others clearly confirm the rising power of the mysterious cyber gangs known as Shadow Brokers. Oops your important files have been encrypted.We guarantee that you can recover all your files safely and easily. Send $300 worth of bitcoin to the following address… was the chilling and irking message that filled the screens of some hundreds of thousands of PCs worldwide.The virus locked users out of their systems, leaving utilities, health services and corporations including telcos reeling from the impact of these sudden and severe attacks. The cost of the 2017 attacks is estimated at a whopping $5 billion from loss of data to post-attack disruption and restoration and reputational harm.
But WannaCry and Petya may just be the tip of the iceberg. What other technology horrors are lurking in our networks? Ransomware is growing at the inordinate rate of 350%(1).So the question today is not ‘Could’ my organisation be cyberattacked? but rather ‘When’? Cybersecurity used to be an IT issue, and it has now become a must-have – even a differentiator. A single cyber-attack can cause shares to plunge drastically. Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s are now using cybersecurity as a criterion in their credit ratings. And with the Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into effect this year, organisations run the risk of getting a big fat fine for non-compliance.
We need to build a cyber defence ecosystem that spans the internal environment of the organisation, but also partners, start-up, customers and so on. And let’s not forget that within GDPR there is no transfer of responsibility when relying on a third party. Cyber defence is about having an integrated approach: being sharply predictive, being vigorously proactive and being highly reactive. With this in mind, Orange grouped its security skills and infrastructure under a single entity, Orange Cyberdefense, so its customers will be supported in their digital transformation and protected against cyber-attacks. We are all affected by this and the wholesale industry is a key player in providing solutions and innovation to combat these threats. It’s about thoroughly and regularly detecting the vulnerable areas because that’s what the hackers are after. So, prevent breaches by scanning from endpoint to networks to the cloud and concentrating on encryption of data transmissions to protect customers and income.
AI technologies will help to enable real time identification of anomalies and deviations in the networks. Cybersecurity AI-solutions can potentially tackle new generations of malware and cybersecurity attacks and ultimately give businesses an advantage when facing a cyber-attack.
So, assume you will be breached and be prepared. Build in continuous improvement loop.
Don’t be a target, stay cyber-safe
Sources: (1)Annual cybersecurity report 2017 (Cisco)
