There is a worldwide growth in cyberattacks, according to the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report. Symantec’s director for solution product management in Asia Pacific & Japan Tarun Kaura talked to DNA India about the following findings:
- Zero-Day vulnerabilities doubled from 2015 to 54
- 430 million new malware variants were discovered in 2015. 191 million records were compromised in a single incident (the largest data breach reported thus far).
- Nine reported mega-breaches: “While 429 million identities were exposed, the number of companies that chose not to report the number of records lost, jumped by 85 percent. A conservative estimate by Symantec of those unreported breaches pushes the real number of records lost to more than half a billion.”
Over one million web attacks globally against people every day in 2015. “Many people believe that keeping to well-known, legitimate websites will keep them safe from online crime. This is not true. Cybercriminals continue to take advantage of vulnerabilities in legitimate websites to infect users because website administrators continue to fail to secure their websites. Nearly 75 percent of all legitimate websites have unpatched vulnerabilities.”
Cyber criminals are becoming more organized, using corporate best practices and other professional business activities, says Kaura.
Here are a few ways that Kaura recommends that businesses protect themselves:
- Put into place “multi-layered endpoint security, network security, encryption, strong authentication and reputation-based technologies.”
- Think about hiring a third party expert to manage crises.
- Educate your staff with simulations, guidelines and procedures, and reinforce these with practice drills.
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