Castler Escrow

Firms Face Huge Cybersecurity Risks

The scope of securing your business and your business’ intimate details have expanded into technological domains with an increasingly digitizing world. In response, cyber attacks are continuously evolving. Find out what you can do to protect your company from data and privacy breaches.

Cybersecurity risk is a cumulation of threat, vulnerability and consequence. In order to understand the risks properly and determine their impact on a business’ intellectual property, it is necessary to evaluate these components-
  • Threats refer to the possibility of unlawfully gaining dramatic advantages by putting someone in a compromised position. The advantages may be related to financial gains, political statements, and military among others.
  • Vulnerabilities refer to weak points in the process, procedure, and/or technology used by the targeted firm. Threat actors have the capacity to launch cyber-attacks by exploiting vulnerabilities.
  • Consequence is the harm caused due to digital attacks. This can refer to the losing sensitive data, disrupting a corporate network, and/or damaging the technological fabric of a firm.

    • Evaluating the Risks

    Cybersecurity risk is a huge challenge for companies, and here are a few reasons why you should be wary of unprecedented cyber attacks-
    1. Nature of the attack – No two cyber attacks have the same consequence. In online phishing, for instance, criminals masquerade as trustworthy sources who seek to obtain sensitive information or client funds. However, when it comes to ransomware, attackers target hardware components for ransom.
    2. Size of the problem – Attackers target both large and small firms. Smaller firms are more actively targeted as they are comparatively less equipped with cybersecurity. They don’t realise that they’ve been compromised until it’s too late.

    The Costs Under Threat

    Investing in cybersecurity is increasingly becoming a necessity. Following are the costs you and your firm would have to bear if you don’t adopt cybersecurity measures-
    1. Economic costs – Costs from theft of intellectual property, disruption in trading, and from repairing damaged systems.
    2. Reputational costs – Loss of consumer trust due to cyber attacks would result in losing future customers to competitors.
    3. Regulatory costs – These refer to fines that an organisation may have to incur if it becomes a victim of cyber attacks and ends up compromising on sensitive information involuntarily.
    Having discussed what entails a cybersecurity threat to a firm and/or individual, it is important to address what measures one can take to protect oneself-
  • Conduct a thorough cybersecurity audit – this will ensure that any present vulnerabilities get addressed. This might require additional advice and services from specialist security providers.
  • Multi-tier education – Senior management should be involved in promoting awareness about the risks. This can be achieved by investing in training sessions that teach how to identify potential threats and avert risks.
    • Firms have to handle huge volumes of confidential information everyday. Therefore, developing a robust and detailed understanding of cybersecurity risks is now a commercial necessity. Cybersecurity has moved past being just an IT issue – it is a strategic risk management issue with an impact that stretches beyond just one firm. Therefore, by extension, adopting cybersecurity measures is bound to have a major impact on multiple global industries.

    Protecting Yourself from Phishing Scams

    With evolving cyber crimes, there are many facets of privacy that have become necessary to safeguard. For someone to pretend to be someone they’re not online is fairly easy and can result in significant data and security breaches. There are, however, some tips that can help protect your privacy from phishing scams.
    In order to protect yourself against potential phishing attempts, it is essential that an individual follow the top five rules of thumb-
    1. Verify the authenticity of the sender – When you receive an email from an unknown and unverified sender, you should be suspicious. One should do some basic research on the sender to ascertain legitimacy and protect oneself.
    2. Ensure that your device is not outdated – It is vital to ensure that your device’s antivirus systems are updated and compatible with your operating system and browser of choice. This would give you a better sense of the unsafe and/or suspicious sites that you should avoid.
    3. Read all the content in a message – When you open and read an email and/or message from an unknown source, you should certainly read the message in its entirety to avoid getting scammed. Check for red flags like emails that do not address your name directly, or have a conspicuous sender-name. For example, if you received an email from “Amaz0n” instead of “Amazon”, you’re most probably getting scammed.
    4. Don’t open embedded links and/or download files from unknown contacts – Anyone can create a phishing link and cover it up with a perfectly legitimate website without any subtle differences. In this manner, they can easily steal the information you provide.
    5. Keep in mind that phishing can be done from different channels – An individual should beware that phishing could be done in channels other than email. Phishing can occur through social media apps like Facebook/Whatsapp as well.
    To be alert is to be aware. Be wary of the pointers mentioned herein and always evaluate profiles of people you do not personally know and/or trust thoroughly. There are not enough steps that can be taken to ensure your safety and security.

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