Data Privacy as top priority
In 2022, the world where data is everything. We use it in all areas of our lives, communicate with each other using data with our devices, organize our lives, that make our lives easier. It’s also an important part of every business because it gives information about business decisions and improves your business operations. It’s also valuable to cybercriminals. If they access this data, cybercriminals can disrupt the business. Therefore, privacy and data protection should be top priority for all businesses.
The threat of cyberattacks is always present, but many companies don’t think cybercriminals can harm them because they don’t have valuable data, so they use fraud detection software. From standard internal data that can be used for ransomware and extracted for further cyber-attacks, to more valuable information such as intellectual property data and payment details from customer or supplier databases. It’s wrong here because all the data is valuable to cybercriminals. By 2020, more than 80% of organizations reported a dramatic increase in cyberattacks. Every company has something to lose in a cyberattack.
All businesses have access to sensitive information that must be protected from the hands of malicious individuals. Keeping that data safe, from company secrets to customer data, must be a priority for all businesses. There is no limit to the outcome of a cyberattack, from reputational damage to financial damage to disruption of business continuity. It can cost businesses billions of dollars. Taking Marriott’s data 2020 breach as an example, it started with the theft of employee credentials. This credential was used to access information for 5.2 million guests and can now be used for even more malicious behaviour. Not only was Marriott not be able to protect their customer’s personal information and had to pay fines in the face of class action, but the breach would also significantly reduce the trust of potential customers, resulting in further financial loss.
Not only does it protect your business data from being the victim of cyberattacks from causing significant financial damage, but it also helps retain existing customers and help new customers be trusted and reassured- one can`t run a business without customers.
Reference:
Gergo Varga, Senior Content Manager, SEON
December 16 2021, Cybersecurity Magazine
Ransomware in the Bitcoin world
As of this writing, 5051 known ransomware families have been detected, and almost all of them require payment in Bitcoin. Still, the lack of globally reliable statistics on the effects of cybercrime in general, especially ransomware, is a major misunderstanding about the seriousness of the threat. Like other ransomware, these families focus on forcing money from victims, causing fear and concern among potential victims who see the attack as a direct threat. As of this writing, 5051 known ransomware families have been detected, and almost all of them require payment in Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency to date.
This is unfortunate because the lack of reliable statistics prevents policy-makers and practitioners from understanding the true scope of the problem, and the size of the illicit market it fuels and prevents them from being able to make informed decisions on how best to address it, as well as to determine what levels of resources is needed to control it. Both cybercrime and ransomware attacks take place in many regions of the world and reporting the prevalence of the threat on a global level is difficult, especially when it involves a blend of fairly sophisticated technologies that may not be familiar to a large number of law enforcement organizations. We present a novel method for identifying and gathering information on Bitcoin transactions related to illicit activity. We implement this method on top of the GraphSense open-source platform and apply it to empirically analyze transactions related to 35 ransomware families. Estimating the lower limit of the direct economic impact of each ransomware family shows that the market minimum for ransomware payments from 2013 to mid-2017 is $ 12,768,536 (22,967.54 BTC). You can also see that the market is very biased and dominated by a small number of players. From these findings, the total ransom amounts gathered through ransomware attacks are relatively low compared to the hype surrounding this issue.
CyberSec101: 
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