Cyber Threats: Who Wants Your Money?

Nowadays, no organization which is planning to go or it is already (partially or completely) in the cloud can minimize the importance of cyber-security. Like a fighter during the last round of a combat, an organization cannot let the guard down after hours.

photo courtesy: @MSAU

Virtually everyone, from employees to executives and partners, are always connected to the Internet. Internet access is ubiquitous and everyone is carrying super-computers in their pockets.

And that increased surface of utilization created by the possibility of “access everywhere” challenges cyber-security status, because the interaction between smart devices and users and locations (safe or not) exposes individuals and companies to several security threats. That’s why in many organizations employees with access to important documents should treat their personal devices with the same rigor as their computing systems at work.

At the end of the day, cybersecurity is risk management, and the best approach to handle this is by establishing a secure corporate culture with positive management practices.

 

“Know Yourself and Your Enemy” – Sun Tzu

The internet is a fantastic place. Any information at the reach of your fingertips, however evil lurks. Cyber-Criminals are on the look out, looking for the right person to prey on. Day in, day out, thousands of hackers navigate through the web, attacking systems, devising plans, looking to exploit weaknesses in someone’s environment. 24x7. 7 days a week. The importance of the right security partner is paramount because it doesn’t matter how secure you try to be, hackers will always outnumber the defence team.

And now, hackers are not only after fame and glory. They are after intellectual damage and financial loss. Countries are fighting each other using the cyberspace, which created a whole new of threat classification in itself. It is like the wild west out there, and they are after everyone weak enough.

Despite that, successful enterprises didn't get there by avoiding risk. Instead they managed them to obtain a competitive edge on the competition.

 

The Enemy

The main cyber threats to organizations nowadays can be categorized as:

• Poor or Malicious Products
• Internal Threats (Insiders)
• Hacktivists
• Terror and Crime organizations
• Nation-States

Today we will start a series of posts targeted to “know your enemy”. We will identify the players in the current cyberwars, their threats and how to manage them.

Let’s start talking about the threats posed by Nation-States.