Intro
The world is awash in the sea of data. Sources and types of data are increasing rapidly, driven by the ubiquitous use of computing in science, commerce, engineering and even the humanities. Protecting crucial data, now more than ever, is an omnipresent concern for top companies across all industries (banking/finance, tech, government/military, entertainment, healthcare), with privacy slowly becoming an unattainable privilege.
Why is cybersecurity critical?
According to the Allianz Risk Barometer, cyber perils are the biggest concern for companies globally in 2022. Asia-Pacific companies receive 6 cyber threats every minute, according to Cisco. A Frost & Sullivan study commissioned by Microsoft revealed that the potential economic loss across the Asia Pacific due to cybersecurity incidents could hit a staggering $1.745 trillion (USD).
Statistics
- 95% of cybersecurity breaches are caused by human error. (Cybint)
- The worldwide information security market is forecast to reach $170.4 billion in 2022. (Gartner) 88% of organizations worldwide experienced spear phishing attempts in 2019. (Proofpoint)
- 68% of business leaders feel their cybersecurity risks are increasing. (Accenture)
On average, only 5% of companies’ folders are adequately protected. (Varonis)Data breaches exposed 36 billion records in the first half of 2020. (RiskBased) 86% of breaches were financially motivated, and 10% were motivated by espionage. (Verizon) 45% of breaches featured hacking, 17% involved malware and 22% involved phishing. (Verizon) Between January 1, 2005, and May 31, 2020, there have been 11,762 recorded breaches. (ID Theft Resource Center) The top malicious email attachment types are .doc and .dot, which make up 37%; the next highest is .exe at 19.5%. (Symantec)
An estimated 300 billion passwords are used by humans and machines worldwide. (Cybersecurity Media). These numbers are only growing by the day with new technologies like 5G emerging, unawareness of the rising threats, the massive rush to cloud computing, the move formwork to home networks, high profile IoT(Internet Of Things) hacks, the widespread use of social media, etc. Unpatched system and architecture weaknesses are much more susceptible to attacks as vulnerabilities are much easier to identify.
Cybercrimes are vastly undercounted because they aren’t reported — due to embarrassment, fear of reputational harm, and the notion that law enforcement can’t help (amongst other reasons). Some companies are forced to pay large amounts of ransom money to the hacker(s) to keep the “hack” out of the public eye. The demand for cybersecurity professionals, therefore, increases exponentially.