This year has seen a lot of cyber and ransomware attacks starting with the disclosure of 119,000 documents left on a server- unprotected by FedEx, a compromise of over 37 million customers records by Panera Bread Co with Aadhaar system hacked and 1.20 billion peoples data was put at risk and then comes the ransomware attacks of the city of Atlanta and Boeing Co.
And it’s only the month of April.
The conclusion to be drawn here is that the state of cyber-security is getting worse and worse despite the amount of investment added to improve this sector. According to anonymous assessment of 22 security chief executives and security analysts as well as chief technology officers – the state of cyber-security will decline further.
During the annual RSA conference by Dell Technologies Inc.’s RSA Security LLC subsidiary opened the conference by asking people on the front line of the cyber security, “Are we winning the battle against cybercriminals? And if not, what can be done to reverse the tide?”
On the first question the gloomy agreement of the experts was united, which was, “Not only are we losing the war, but the scope and severity of successful attacks is accelerating.”
Paul Kurtz former National Security Council Member answer to the first question saying, “It’s not even close. We are taking it on the chin day after day.”
The CEO of Cryptonite LLC, Mike Simon agreed and said that the situation is, “extremely serious. We’re seeing a massive ramp-up at the start of 2018 in a number of different areas, particularly intellectual property theft.”
The opinions of these experts were backed by researchers and surveys done already. A recent survey shows that 46% of US companies have been attacked by data breaches in the past year and it is the double of the percentage in 2016.
Harvey Sverdlove, chief technology officer at Edgewise Networks Inc. noted that the breach in Equifax Inc. lasted year affected half the population of US. He claims that this cyber-attack would have been comical if it weren’t so tragic.
He further adds saying, ““The tools the criminals use haven’t gotten that much more sophisticated, but the volume of breaches has exploded.” Brian Krebs who is the author of Krebs on Security blog wrote on high profile incidents such as Panera and Equifax breach and says that, “Companies don’t have a lot of incentive to write secure code or to produce secure web sites and apps because they view the cost of doing so to outweigh the cost of fixing it when things are discovered or broken.”
For the criminals, Brian added saying, “The barriers to entry have never been lower and the low-hanging fruit never more abundant. The chances of success with low to moderate effort are high and there are seldom consequences for criminals. It’s no wonder that cybercrime is such a fast-growing industry.”
Tory Hunt the founder of HavelBeenPwned.com says that, “It’s like asking if we’re winning the war against our fingernails. They keep growing back.”
Source: Silicon Angle