Cyber Risk Readiness – Need of the hour

Increased online shopping, labor shortages, supply chain disruptions — and now the Log4j security flaw — have created a perfect storm for enterprise cybersecurity professionals this holiday season.

A recent survey queried cyber professionals from more than 1,200 organizations around the world. These professionals had experienced a ransomware attack during a holiday or weekend in the past year. Despite that, Nearly 90% said they were still worried about repeat attacks during this holiday season. And more than one-third said they had no “specific contingency plan in place to mount a response.”

It gets worse. In a new survey of IT professionals:

  • 94% said they want their organizations to improve their cyber-readiness.
  • One in three have had their technology and security budgets reduced.
  • More than half have experienced costly downtime due to a cyber concern.
  • Three-fourths find it challenging to maintain fully staffed security teams during peak periods.

 

Before Labor Day, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement urging enterprises to remain on alert for ransomware attacks due to big impact cyber incidents on holidays and weekends when offices typically are closed.

And now the Log4j flaw has created a massive vulnerability that is spurring more than100 hacking attempts per minute.

For potentially existential threats like this, your executive teams and board members need a clear, up-to-the-minute corporate risk profile to gauge potential damage,  act quickly and direct resources where needed most. To do so effectively, however, requires integrated, automated risk modeling and quantification that is based on an organization’s own systems data. It also requires that an organization can quickly and intuitively assess that information, for all risk factors together, for decision-making.  Unfortunately, many organizations are not yet at this point in their risk management and technology evolution. And this enables the many bad actors to get away with bad Santa behavior.

The team at RiskOpsAI encourages enterprise teams across industries to shore up your defenses in the short term to avoid any holiday nightmares. And of course, you should explore more impactful digital risk modeling and reporting as part of your long-term solution  – maybe even as part of a new year’s resolution.

We hope you have a wonderful, restful, and event-free holiday season. Here’s to starting the new year with renewed energy and purpose.