As we enter a new year, many of us tend to focus on the future. We speculate what this new decade will look like in terms of technology, fashion, entertainment, and more. Often during this fantasizing, we tend to overlook overcoming the obstacles that might put the dreams of our future at risk. While we’re just starting to pay more attention to digital attacks as potential risks, it’s possible that we may be doing too little, too late in terms of security.
By taking a look at the current state of cybersecurity, and having an honest conversation about the risks your business may face (as well as proposing a practical solution), you can be confident heading into a new year and beyond that your organization’s most important assets are protected.
What does cybersecurity look like this year?
The current state of affairs in cybersecurity is bleak. The number of attacks continue to increase year over year, and costs of damages continue to drive into the tens of billions of dollars globally. Businesses fall victim to a ransomware attack every 11 seconds, up significantly from every 40 seconds in 2016.
Small to mid-sized businesses believe they’re more immune to these attacks because they don’t have as much to offer as enterprise accounts, because of this false security they often are more lax with initiating security measures and protecting their data. Half of small businesses have experienced a cyber attack, yet many of them don’t invest in resources to keep themselves protected.
By not paying attention to these concerning trends, businesses put themselves at risk for more damage.
Consequences of a Data Breach
It’s easy to downplay the very real threat of a security breach until your organization experiences it firsthand. Gaining a better understanding of the very real consequences of a breach can help you learn how to better prevent them.
The consequences of a security breach can be incredibly detrimental to your business. Identity theft, financial loss, stress, plus the inconvenience of having to change contact information are possibilities if your data is breached.
Not only does a breach bring productivity to a grinding halt, but once news of a breach becomes public, your company might be labeled as careless, inattentive or negligent. Regardless of your company’s reputation, a breach can completely and sometimes irrecoverably damage your brand.
If your clients are affected, they may be encouraged to terminate your relationship. Even if many of your clients are unharmed, they may still lose valuable confidence in your services. Economically, data breaches can wreak havoc. Their effect on customers can severely damage revenue in both the short and long term. A study by IBM indicates that the global average cost of a data breach is $4.45 million. Not only may it affect your companies’ growth, but it may also lead to numerous fines and lawsuits from your affected customers.
Amazon Web Services and Security
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the largest provider of cloud computing services in the world, with over 90% of Fortune 100 companies working with an AWS Partner.
Unlike other cloud providers who define a region as a single data center, AWS Regions consist of multiple Availability Zones consisting of discrete data centers with identical power, networking, and connectivity abilities, and each housed in separate facilities to ensure the cloud is always secure. This means that even if one data center is compromised, your data is backed up to other data centers and still protected.
AWS has strategic security designed with protecting your organization’s most important assets in mind.
Prevent
Define user permissions and identities, infrastructure protection and data protection measures for a smooth and planned AWS adoption strategy.
Detect
Gain visibility into your organization’s security posture with logging and monitoring services. Ingest this information into a scalable platform for event management, testing, and auditing.
Respond
Automated incident response and recovery to help shift the primary focus of security teams from response to analyzing the root cause.
Remediate
Leverage event-driven automation to quickly remediate and secure your AWS environment in near real-time.
AWS is designed to help your organization build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure for your applications. World-class security experts monitor AWS’s infrastructure and also build and maintain their security services.
How to implement AWS
PiF Technologies is an Amazon Web Services partner. The first step in moving to the cloud is consulting with us, we’ll help walk you through the process and identify next steps. We then identify a first workload to start testing in the cloud, focusing on dev/test, website and non-production servers as a first project. We’ll install the AWS Application Discovery Service on some of your on-premise servers to collect statistics which then will allow us to determine approximate costs and total cost of ownership.
We’d love to help you discover how AWS can protect your organization and simplify storing your data. Schedule a demo with us using the form below to have a conversation about your needs and how PiF can help.
