5 Billion Records Exposed In 2019

We are overwhelmed by stories of organisations falling victim to cyber threats but a recent report released by ForgeRock, the ForgeRock Consumer Identity Breach Report puts the overall scale of the situation into perspective, summarising that 5 billion records were exposed by breaches in 2019 alone. 

Alongside this key insight, the report also noted: 

• Breaches have increased significantly over the last 12 months in both numbers and cost to the victims business. 
• Attackers are targeting organisations across all industries, with the Healthcare industry suffering the highest number of breaches (382) costing $2.45 billion and the Technology industry having the highest number of records compromised by attackers (1.37 billion). 
• The most common attack vector was unauthorised access, accounting for 40% of breaches, followed by ransomware and malware (15%) and phishing (14%). 

These figures suggest an alarming lack of awareness when it comes to cyber threats and breaches.

The impact to your business of suffering a successful breach of customer data and PII extends much further than expected. Not only are you liable for fines for breach of GDPR stretching to €20m or 4% of global annual turnover, whichever is greater, but you also have to factor in the cost of repairing your systems, networks and hardware and loss of business related to waning customer trust, the list goes on.

Implementing strong defences against cyber threats will help you effectively defend against attacks to your business from malicious individuals.

It is no longer an option to ignore the threat of cyber criminals attacking your organisation. Implementing a strong security culture will help you defend against the majority of incoming attacks and give you the knowledge and tools to identify, contain and remediate threats in the event they breach your security.

SES recommend that you begin by creating a robust Incident Response Plan which you can follow in the event of a successful breach as this gives you a clear set of actions to take control of the situation and swiftly remediate. In addition, SES also recommend that you perform regular Vulnerability Assessments and Penetration Testing once a year or after each major version change to review your systems and networks for vulnerabilities an attacker could exploit on a regular basis.

It is also recommended that you perform Phishing Assessments on your organisation. These will ensure your staff have the capability to identify and avoid falling victim to phishing emails which attackers use to extract sensitive information to bypass your organisations security or deploy malware into your systems and networks.

If you would like to discuss your organisations security in more detail, please get in touch to speak to one of our specialists.

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