Securing customer information and private data has been paramount to every business especially the financial institutions. Data breaches have been on the rise as long as the companies have records and private data. This has been fueled by the digitalization of data storage, and so has cybercrime evolved. Companies have invested more than ever in securing because the risks of exposure have also increased. It is important for companies to know the ways they can prevent themselves from cyber-attack and ways to minimize effects if it eventually happens ( Cherdantseva, 2016 ). Understanding ways to cope with cybercrime would make the fight against it easier and less costly. It is the responsibility of every company to keep up with the trends of cyber-attacks in efforts to outsmart the cyber criminals.
The first step of fighting the threat of cybercrime is accepting that this threat is real. The organizations that recognize the reality of cybercrime are able to keep up with the security standards and are able to achieve compliance as early as possible. Training staff on the treat of cybercrime in efforts to seal the weak points posed by uneducated staff that are exploited by most cybercriminals ( Huang, 2018 ). Keeping the organization safe from begins with verifying every user to make sure there is no unauthorized access. It is also critical to validate every device used to access the organizations system especially now that data storage has migrated to cloud storage and these information can be accessed remotely on any device. These steps are followed by intelligently limiting access based on user needs. It is not logical to allow a security officer to freely access the manager’s information. It is important to allow users to see and use only the information they need.
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In the event that an attack has already happened, there are various ways to contain the situation. Isolating the infected systems is the first step of containment efforts. Disconnecting the endpoints and servers ensure that the threat is not spread to other unaffected systems ( Kozik, 2019 ). Secondly, call cybersecurity professionals. They are able to assess the situation through a system audit. Thirdly, notify the relevant authorities. The authorities are able to pick up the trail and ensure the attack does not spread to other organizations. The next phase is to inform the clients and explain the underlying situation. Identifying the vulnerabilities exploited by the attackers should be assessed by security professionals ( Bada, 2019 ). On identifying them, relevant solutions should be deployed immediately and later make a report on the whole situation. Finally, refresh on the training to ensure such and other attacks are prevented.
The fact that data breaches can be expensive makes companies invest in cyber security. According to statistics, in 2016, cybercrimes cost the U.S. economy a staggering amount between $59 billion and $109 billion ( Jennifer, 2018 ). The increasing sophistication of these attacks has made the organizations make efforts in securing their data. With the mentality that the businesses are vulnerable at one point, the businesses are able to keep on toes their system security. Another reason to invest on cyber security is the availability of hacking tools. The availability has caused problems to businesses because the number of attackers keeps growing with the ease of access of these tools. The government has also set up regulations on businesses with an objective of reducing these attacks and the businesses have to adhere to them.
Enhancing cyber security is directly beneficial to the businesses, their clients, the government and the general public as a whole. The companies are tasked with the responsibility of keeping their data safe from cyber-attacks at all costs. The combined effort of the businesses, their workers and the government ensures the integrity and safety of private data at variant levels.
References
Bada, M., Sasse, A. M., & Nurse, J. R. (2019). Cyber security awareness campaigns: Why do they fail to change behaviour?. arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.02672 .
Cherdantseva, Y., Burnap, P., Blyth, A., Eden, P., Jones, K., Soulsby, H., & Stoddart, K. (2016). A review of cyber security risk assessment methods for SCADA systems. Computers & security , 56 , 1-27.
Huang, K., Siegel, M., & Stuart, M. (2018). Systematically understanding the cyber-attack business: A survey. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) , 51 (4), 70.
Jennifer, E. & Shelly, H. (2018). The Cost of Cyber Attacks on U.S. Economy.
Kozik, R., Choras, M., & Keller, J. (2019). Balanced Efficient Lifelong Learning (B-ELLA) for Cyber Attack Detection. J. UCS , 25 (1), 2-15.
Romanosky, S. (2016). Examining the costs and causes of cyber incidents. Journal of Cybersecurity , 2 (2), 121-135.
