MEDIA PUBLICATION

In Cybersecurity It’s Time to Go on the Offence

Cybercrime statistics can easily be described as disturbing and horrifying. They reveal attacks and breaches that are expensive, intrusive, damaging and time consuming. Verizon’s research revealed that around 94% of malware was delivered by e-mail; the leading social engineering attack remains phishing; 39% of breaches were perpetrated by organised crime; and 71% were motivated by money. This landscape is further complicated by Covid-19, the sudden shift to remote working, and the introduction of new and unexpected vulnerabilities.

According to Jayson O’Reilly, GM of AtVance Intellect: Cyber Division, organisations have spent hundreds of millions of rand on technology, security operations centres and resources but few are verifying whether the money spent is being put to good use.

“Securing the enterprise is not just about purchasing new technology and moving the dial. It’s about taking existing investments and ensuring that they are delivering results,” he said. “There are so many organisations not getting value from their security investments and suffering breaches that they could have avoided. It’s critical to verify and validate any security investment on an ongoing basis to find the holes and plug them with proactive security measures.”

Existing security must be consistently tested, assessed and managed to ensure that vulnerabilities and unexpected risks are not creeping in, undetected. This is a common problem. An International Data Corp survey found that one of the biggest causes of cloud data breaches is misconfiguration of security. It also revealed that 80% of companies have experienced such a breach in the past 18 months and that both misconfigurations and the inability to detect access to sensitive data are two of the top threats facing business.