Business Data is increasing with each passing second, & so are the cyberdefense concerns. It is time to harness the power of cybersecurity and safeguard our systems
Digitization has been a boon to all industries and as technology advances, people find distinct ways of leveraging the same technology for different purposes. Initially, the researches surrounding nuclear technology and energy were focused on the development of defense weapons, but after World War II, the route of the research was directed towards more peaceful utilization of nuclear energy, such as generation of electricity.
On the same note, as technology progresses in the cybersecurity arena, cyber attackers are consistently upgrading their ways to penetrate networks and environments for all the wrong reasons.
According to the data presented by the Atlas VPN team, cyberattacks have increased by 33% since last year. The total amount of malicious attacks in Q1 went up from 538 in 2020 to 713 in 2021. Even if we just go around looking for a time span under the last 24 hours, we can see there is a major supply and demand gap that the Cybersecurity Industry is widening at this very moment with you reading this.
Don’t Believe us? Look at the news scroll from Google News Feed that we found under the latest happenings of Cybersecurity.
This has led to several Security Leaders amping up their services and modules to strengthen their cyberdefense infrastructure by the hour. Infact one of the most leading and prominent cloud email security providers, Zix has expanded its Global Partner Program in the United Kingdom and Germany to take advantage of localized product offerings such as Advanced Threat Protection and Secure File Share.
This indicates that the cybersecurity companies need to up their game and find a way to be steps ahead of the cyber attackers and criminals. The industry realizes the significance of what’s at stake and hence is making headlines for surging the investment in development of essential cybersecurity solutions.
In fact, within the last week itself, the industry witnessed major funding for companies that have an outcome-based approach to the transformation of cybersecurity.
And on the other hand,One of the prominent InfoSec Companies Exabeam Secured $200 Million to cement its leadership in the security information and event management (SIEM) market by reimagining the threat detection, investigation and response (TDIR) problem with an open extended detection and response (XDR).
More and more companies are emerging and joining the cybersecurity market landscape to transform the way we offer protection and redefine the significance of cyber solutions.
In Fact even if we look at the landscape dating 2 years back i.e 2019, we can still see the extensive drill down and the expanse of the landscape, this is prior to the pandemic
It is evident that industries and organizations are under attack by cyber criminals. But before venturing into what is the impact of these attacks on the said organization, it is important to understand certain things that lay the foundation of the cyber arena.
Let’s start with understanding, What is a cyber attack?
Someone who isn’t authorized to enter a network, device, or a system, trying to infiltrate with the intent to cause harm and damage, entering the environment is known as a cyber attack. It is an attack that is aimed at carrying out unlawful activities with vicious attack strategies by cyber criminals.
Cyber criminals are the people or the group of people who launch these attacks on the systems.
What are the effects of cyber attacks on businesses?
There are different types of cyber attacks that can have different effects on businesses.
One of the most common types of cyber attacks is ransomware, where the attackers hold the victim’s information in exchange for a ransome. Until the ransom is provided, the access is withheld by the criminals, causing disruption in the business.
Businesses lose out on a lot of money paid in ransom, lost due to barriers in daily operations, and even in claims and damages. Not to mention the cost incurred on the damage done to the reputation of the organization. Apart from that, businesses also have to alter their practices to ensure that their compromised systems go back to normalcy, enhanced with better protection capabilities. There is also the loss of stolen property when attackers steal intellectual property.
Are cyber attacks increasing?
The answer is yes!
The proportion of businesses targeted by cyber criminals in the past year increased from 38% to 43%, with over a quarter of those targeted (28%) experiencing five attacks or more, according to the Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report 2021.
What can we do to reduce the impact of these attacks and block them altogether? What are some ways of preventing cyber terrorism?
- Update all your software and and systems
- Install Endpoint Protection
- Have a firewall installed
- Access Management
- Provide API Security
What is API Security?
API Security is the application of security practices to protect the APIs in modern application, including both – the ones owned as well as the ones in use.This is to ensure that the channel that your microservices and containers communicate is secure just like application and system security.
Why is API security important for businesses today?
Data transfers and connecting services are some daily essentials of all modern day businesses.
- Connecting to third party applications via APIs can leave scope for cyber attackers to take advantage of any exposed or broken APIs to carry out data breach activities.
- There are a ton of API vulnerabilities that can leave businesses compromised and the IT teams, infrastructure exposed.
- A broad attack can be orchestrated that can lead to massive breaches and administrative losses.
Hence, it is important that businesses secure their APIs with the most up to date API security solutions.
How can we cater to our API security needs?
The Publicly available APIs always harness a tremendous risk factor to its providers. The ballgame is too evident with the endpoint that is in place for every API, leaving the providers worried about API vulnerability.
In Fact the susceptible risk as predicted by Gartner can see a phase shift in terms of API Abuses moving from infrequent to the frequent attack vector.
Hence it gets extremely important to find the most suitable solution and actually fits your purpose in the same Umbrella way. A recommendation on the top of our recent research and coverage list is Salt Security.
While Salt Security is one of the most recognized API security leaders in the cybersecurity industry, It is most importantly known for helping organizations reduce their API infiltration incidents and threats.
In fact, the company witnessed 400% growth in revenue, 160% growth in employees, and 380% growth in the API traffic it secured in the last 12 months, which is what led to its newest funding round. Salt Security raised $70 Million to lead the API security market by offering solutions that can protect APIs from abuses from infrequent to the most-frequent attack vector and data breaches for enterprise web applications.
Conclusion
As cybersecurity companies begin to expand, it has been noticed there is a lot of potential talent pool in the market, wanting to get into the industry, but lacking proper guidance and direction.
Many aspiring cybersecurity specialists often ask themselves questions like-
What is the best way into a cybersecurity career?
Or
What should I do to pursue my career as a security professional?
Or
I have no experience in technology and want to become a master and eventually progress into a cybersecurity career. Where do I begin?
Or
What programming skills and knowledge are required for pursuing a cybersecurity career?
- The answer to all the above mentioned questions is really simple and that is to start somewhere immediately.
- You can go for a course being offered online by several edtech companies or even enroll yourself for a diploma at any of the universities.
- But one of the most important things that will get your boat floating is practising and being able to identify vulnerabilities in the least expected areas.
Cybersecurity is expected to witness a huge boom in the industrial landscape and it is now up to the organizations under attack to assess and apply the best cybersecurity practices and solutions to their everyday operations and build a wall of security around their business!
For more such updates and perspectives around Digital Innovation, IoT, Data Infrastructure, AI & Cybsercurity, go to AI-Techpark.com.
