14 DAY TRIAL // Frost & Sullivan has published an interesting market insight on hacks and their future consequences.
Alexander Michael, director of Consulting, Information & Communication Technologies at Frost & Sullivan highlights the fact that large amounts of information are made available on underground cyber criminal markets.
Many people might not realize this, but it’s likely that their personal details are already being sold on such marketplaces.
Following data breaches such as the ones that affected cPanel, LinkedIn, and Twitter, users are usually told that there’s no evidence that their personal or financial details have been compromised.
However, as Michael emphasizes, companies can’t be 100% certain, and since cybercriminals are in it for the profit, if they have gained access to valuable data, it’s likely that they’ve already put it up for sale.
The expert believes that the security industry is moving in the right direction, making it possible even for small and medium businesses to protect their systems against attacks.
However, no matter how many measures are being implemented, cybercrimine will continue to exist so it’s important that everyone starts understanding the risks and starts changing their behavior.
“Organisations need to realise that websites are not just websites. Businesses have a fundamental dependence on their websites, and a compromised website can destroy a healthy business in no time at all. Security needs to be an integrated part of everything we do – not an afterthought – and everybody must understand risk and change their behaviour accordingly,” he noted.
“I have every reason to believe that Black Hats are also skilled librarians, able to cash in on the seemingly worthless information stolen years ago, which becomes priceless when a person becomes famous,” Michael added.
“There is not a lot we can do about the ticking time bombs of e-mail archives that have already been stolen, but we can absolutely make sure that web vulnerabilities are discovered and eliminated.”
The insight is available here (registration required to gain access to the complete article).