Cybersecurity Attack not a Threat but Statistical Certainty
In today’s uncertain world, there’s no telling when you’ll get hacked, or how bad of a breach it will be. Whether you’re a gamer on Sony’s PlayStation Network, a mobile user, a bank or a cloud service provider, security is a top priority right now. And people are finally starting to realize it.
On behalf of networking company Juniper Networks, Ponemon Research surveyed of 583 U.S companies, and 90 percent of respondents said their organizations were hacked in the past 12 months. Further, almost 60 percent reported two breeches in the same period, while 50 percent said they “had little confidence” they’ll be able to prevent another attack from happening in the coming year.
“… to have 90% saying they had experienced at least one breach, and more than 50% saying they had experienced two or more, is mind-blowing.” Those findings suggest “that a breach has become almost a statistical certainty,” said Johnnie Konstantas, director of product marketing at Juniper.
The results of this Ponemon survey are alarming, but seem to fit in with the large number of security headlines we’ve been seeing recently. The same can be said of the fact that the organizations participated in the study ranged from SMBs to enterprises to government agencies. Half of the respondents said resource constraints were to blame for their security troubles, and a similar number cited complexity as the main issue they tackled.
Indeed, there have been quite a few security breaches lately. Hacker group Anonymous hacked and temporarily shut down 91 Malaysian sites, including 51 government-operated ones. Payroll firm Automatic Data Processing (ADP) confirmed an intrusion to the systems of Workscape, a company it has just acquired, and Citibank was hacked by altering URLs – all in the past month.
Organizations have been taking note in light of all these incidents. Michael Callahan, Director at HP’s Worldwide Security Prod and Johnny Hernandez, Director of Information Security at Prime Lending talked about this topic in theCube during HP Discover 2011. The discussed how security blends in with innovation and new technology (video below).
Over at the public sector, the White House passed the approval process of a 52-page Cybersecurity policies document to Congress in order to more quickly implement the law.. Initially, the exeutive branch was selected to carry out the decision.
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