Cybersecurity is really a Business Decision
Back in February Gartner produced published a cyber risk assessment entitled “The Urgency to Treat Cybersecurity as a Business Decision”[1]
In this paper, Gartner senior analyst Paul Proctor describes many important trends within the cybersecurity side of business, as companies are being forced to cope with emerging threats in an environment increasingly defined by government regulation and societal perception.
The paper warned that many of the most popular investments for bolstering company networks will fail. This, said Proctor, is due to the growing “disconnect” between the field of cybersecurity and business needs.
The analysis presented by Gartner six months ago has proved nearly prophetic.
COVID-19
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the cybersecurity landscape has changed dramatically. Many are taking advantage of this crisis. It has been estimated that possibly 80 percent of all cyber campaigns are now leveraging the COVID pandemic in some form or another.
Many aspects of the pandemic world have been capitalized on by cybercriminals. A central method of hackers is to observe behavioral trends online with which to mask malicious activity. COVID has provided several of these patterns. Hackers have used everything from malware-laden sick forms, fraudulent demands for ‘COVID insurance’ fees, and even fake messages from the World Health Organization.
But perhaps the single biggest liability has been created by changes in the global workforce. Data security risks (for the company as well as the employee) have increased immensely with the new remote workforce. One key concern is the security of home networks. The gamet of known router vulnerabilities has provided ample targets for hackers. Home connections are rarely equipped with the same level of security features businesses will invest in corporate networks. Furthermore, home routers are by nature exposed to threats that are usually of no concern to a business environment. These include additional devices being connected through the same router (TVs, game consoles, etc) and additional users having access to the network such as the employee’s family members.
While executives were focused on meeting complex compliance requirements, much more rudimentary steps with substantially higher business value–like enabling secure remote access technologies–were completely missed.
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[1] The Urgency to Treat Cybersecurity as a Business Decision, Gartner, Inc. Published: 12 February 2020 ID: G00466055 Analyst(s): Paul Proctor