In this rapidly evolving digital age, it’s evident that data security is just as important as physical security for any enterprise. Unfortunately, bad actors have developed a variety of cyber threats like malware, phishing, the man in the middle (MiTM), and distributed denial of service (DDOS), to name a few.
In this environment, every enterprise needs to defend itself with a robust data security solution that addresses three essential areas:
- Cybersecurity– At the highest level, cybersecurity focuses on protecting an organization’s internet-connected endpoints from attack.
- Network Security– Protects the network infrastructure and data in transit on the network, from unauthorized access, modification, or destruction.
- Information Security– Processes and procedures designed to protect printed, electronic, or other forms of sensitive data from unauthorized access or misuse.
As organizations add to their digital footprints, hackers and cybercriminals alike have an ever-broadening attack surface to penetrate, and more incentive to attack as sensitive and personally-identifiable information exponentially expands.
The Rise of Enterprise Attacks
While organizations of all sizes must vigilantly protect their systems and data, enterprise-sized organizations are a particularly attractive target. Consider the following statistics compiled by Cybint:
- By 2020, there will be approximately 200 billion connected devices
- By 2020, the average cost of a data breach will exceed $150 million
- In 2018, large-scale DDoS attacks increased in size by 500 percent
- In 2018, hackers stole nearly half a billion personal records
- In 2016, over 75 percent of the entire healthcare industry was infected with malware
Additionally, a recent study by Comparitech revealed that the share price of breached companies falls by over seven percent after news of the breach spreads, magnifying the damage to publicly traded companies and their shareholders.
Enterprise Cybersecurity Software
Simply stated, enterprise cybersecurity is a holistic approach using an organization’s people, processes, and technology to safeguard digital assets against internal and external threats.
In this approach, cybersecurity software provides an ever-present shield to protect the organization’s servers and endpoints, by combining prevention and automated detection to defend against cyber attacks.
Traditionally, cybersecurity software programs were deployed on each endpoint in the network, creating a challenge in managing updates for each device to ensure the most recent patches and virus definitions were in place. Now, innovative cloud-based antivirus software for businesses ensures that all endpoints are up to date since all the definitions are kept in the cloud verse on each device.
Moving Cyber Security to the Cloud
As is the case with most software applications today, cloud-based security software is rapidly becoming the de-facto standard. The cloud is a network of servers, often hosted by a third-party, that utilizes extensive processing and storage capabilities to run business and technical applications, supporting a variety of cases, with security being one of them.
There are five key benefits of using cloud-based network security software:
- 1. The cloud helps simplify operations and administration by eliminating the need for on-premise hardware infrastructure. Additionally, since all of the threat definitions are maintained in the cloud, you don’t have to worry about deploying patches and updates to each endpoint on the network.
- 2. Security teams can take advantage of big data and instant analytics over a broad set of endpoints to instantly understand known threats and predict future problems.
- 3. High availability is “built-in” to the cloud with live monitoring of the network infrastructure with redundant capabilities to ensure maximum uptime.
- 4. The cloud can help enterprise end-users align their many cybersecurity tools, breaking down silos that exist, for example, between an endpoint and network security.
- 5. Enterprises can use the cloud as a security advantage, taking advantage of computing elasticity and scalable services, to deploy new and different security technologies.
Assess the Risks and Invest in Cybersecurity
Infosecurity Magazine estimates that cybercriminals cost the global economy $2.9 million per minute or $1.5 trillion a year. The average successful cyber attack can cost an enterprise over $150 million in damages, on top of the loss of reputation, and in the case of publicly-traded companies, loss of valuation that directly impacts shareholders.
With these facts in mind, it’s fair to say that cybercrime is one of the single greatest threats to all businesses around the world, and the return on investment for cybersecurity should be weighed against the staggering losses that occur as a result of a breach.
