By Vinay Sharma, Regional Director, India and SAARC, NETSCOUT
Cybersecurity threats are increasingly fueled by the Covid-19 pandemic, cloud computing, digital transformation, IoT and BYOD adoption, making organizations very vulnerable to attacks. Measures to address cyber-threats are dominating boardroom discussions today as security becomes one of the KPIs across organizations. Loss of customers, dip in business revenues and damage to brand reputation, due to weak resilience are making news headlines, propelling cybersecurity to become a top business priority. Employees are made to let go of their otherwise productive time to address threats that are increasingly causing disruption to the business operations.
Cybercrimes continue to increase and are more frequent, complex, and sophisticated. The need for a robust cyber resilience strategy to ensure business continuity, before, during and after a cybersecurity incident, has never been so critical. The security measures should demonstrate the organization’s capability to predict, resist, recover from and be able to adapt to address newer threats. According to a Forrester Consulting Study that was commissioned by Capgemini, there are key challenging aspects every organization faces while implementing a cyber-resilience program.
Digital business is growing too fast to keep up with
By going digital, no doubt organizations are witnessing several benefits, such as cost and time reduction in processes, and increase in operational efficiency and productivity. Innovation and business opportunities are leading to newer products, services and of course revenue streams. Data Analytics is empowering IT and business leaders in their decision-making processes and delivering numerous competitive advantages. These changes involve risks where data breaches and cyber-attacks are big risk factors. 79% of the above-mentioned survey respondents identified the high growth in digital business, a challenge to cyber resilience.
Covid-19 has expanded the cyber-threat landscape
As per the study, 71% people confirmed that the pandemic has expanded the threat landscape. The initial lockdown forced remote working arrangement and IT teams scrambled to facilitate this for employees by adopting cloud services to ensure business continuity. However, cybersecurity was overlooked initially. Teams then focused on the security aspect with the security perimeter extending beyond the physical office to edges. This was a great challenge to IT teams as it gave rise to loss of visibility and control of the entire IT ecosystem.
Threats to organizations are more advanced today compared to 2019
According to the latest NETSCOUT Threat Intelligence Report, attackers launched 5.4 million DDoS attacks in 1H 2021. For just the first quarter of 2021, attack frequency increased by 20 percent over the same period in 2020. Furthermore, attackers didn’t simply increase the number of DDoS attacks but developed new ways to target the attacks and monetize them. 68% of respondents in the Forrester study said that threats were more advanced today with attackers developing advanced methods to infiltrate the systems.
Right tools and technologies to address threats are absent
60% of the above Study interviewees confirmed the lack of appropriate tools and technologies in organizations to combat cyber-attacks. The legacy security functionality does not adapt to the constantly evolving threats. There is incompatibility with features regarding access control and security management. These traditional solutions have security flaws and are not capable to implement additional layers of security in record time.
These challenges can be overcome with improved collaboration between cybersecurity and network teams where security is a strategic priority for the latter. This arrangement delivers greater network visibility, provides better clarity about a security incident, improves cost and operational efficiencies, in addition to reducing overall risks.
Both the teams should work together with common toolsets for workflow creation, documentation of formal policies, controls, and best practices to strengthen cyber resilience. This joint effort will deliver the much-needed foundation to implement a robust cyber resilient strategy and keep even the most sophisticated attacks at bay. Security of data, applications, networks, and critical business processes are to be in place for organizations to stay ahead of the curve.