Many New Jersey businesses and residents aren’t strangers to cyber breaches. In 2017, over four million in the Garden State were affected by the Equifax data breach. By 2018, the numbers had been reduced significantly to around 358,000 residents. But this doesn’t mean a decline in data theft; it just emphasizes the massive scale of the Equifax breach.
Given how zero trust security is getting a lot of attention these days, you may think it’s a new concept. But it was back in 2010 when John Kindervag of Forrester Research first coined the term “zero trust” to describe their security model, which had a simple rule: “Trust no one.
You know the drill: you’ve just created an online account, and now you’re asked to come up with a strong password. Certain sites even have password guidelines and will judge the strength of your password: Use at least 12 characters! Use a variety of letters, numbers, punctuation, and special characters! Use upper- and lowercase for letters!
Aside from those, they have other rules you need to remember: Do not use real words found in a dictionary! Do not use real words spelled backwards! Never use your birthday, driver’s license number, street name, favorite color! Never use “password,” “123456789,” “1111111111,” “abc123,” and “qwerty” as passwords!
And so you freeze.
The issues of online security and privacy continue to be of utmost concern for businesses. Last year, nearly half a billion personal records was stolen by hackers; that’s a 126 percent jump from 2017. And so far in 2019, hackers have stolen over $4 billion via crypto crimes.
A virtual private network (VPN) adds security and privacy to public networks, such as wireless hotspots, by rerouting all traffic through a secure server. While VPNs are great for consumers, business-grade solutions offer additional security measures so employees are even more confident they can access the internet safely.
There’s no denying that cybersecurity is complicated. Attack surfaces are larger than ever today, now that smartphones, cloud computing, and internet-connected devices are ubiquitous in the modern workplace. Hackers are getting bolder, and their reach is getting wider.
Cybercrime losses are continually increasing, either in cost or in number of accounts affected. In 2013, the global average cost of cybercrime was at $7.2 million. Five years later, it increased to $11.7 million. In 2018, three of the top 10 largest data breaches of all time happened, affecting around 750 million accounts.
Schools are rarely known for holding huge amounts of financially valuable information in their vaults, such as credit card details. However, that doesn’t make them less of a target to hackers than many other organizations. In fact, cybercriminals are stepping up their attacks against educational institutions, as demonstrated by September’s ransomware attack on a school in Florida Keys.
Although the benefits of cloud computing for small businesses are indispensable, the technology has also introduced a raft of new security concerns and challenges. As more and more businesses move data between their local network and remote data centers, there’s now an entirely new avenue for hackers to exploit.
When it comes to the global volume of spam email, there’s finally some light at the end of the tunnel. Since 2015, the percentage of spam email traffic has been dropping steadily, from 61.9% back in January 2015 to just over 48% in March 2018. That’s great news for workplace productivity and data security.
