23 Aug Cybercrime Bytes: Security Talent Gap, Hiring From Within, Female Cyber Fighters
Weekly news that keeps you on the cutting edge of cybersecurity
– The editors at Cybercrime Magazine
Sausalito, Calif. – Aug. 24, 2020
This week’s rundown is sponsored by Absolute — New enterprise security trends, threats & opportunities revealed in 2020: The State of Endpoint Resilience™ Report, our annual study of 8.5 million devices.
— Stressed and stretched, IT security teams are looking to automation for relief from high volumes of alerts from their detection and response systems. Not only do organizations have to sift through data and prioritize responses to thousands of alerts, but taking action requires hands-on investigating by cyber professionals who are presently in extremely short supply. CSO
— Cybersecurity Ventures predicts there will be 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs by 2021. One way to build a security team during the talent crunch is to hire from within and create a company-wide security team with one or two representatives from each department. IBM Security Intelligence
— Women in cybersecurity bring greater diversity in perspectives, leadership and experiences necessary to fight cybersecurity criminals who have a variety of backgrounds. They also possess strong soft skills compared to men, which can help teams make better decisions and improve productivity. Additionally, they can help narrow the talent shortage. University of North Dakota
— Ransomware and malware attacks have risen during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they’re increasingly targeting remote workers. Netwalker, a strain of ransomware, is using files with coronavirus in the name so that they look important. The files embed code that will encrypt your files. MIT Sloan School of Management
— The move from endpoint to network is a critical aspect of the ransomware strategy. Cybersecurity Ventures estimates that ransomware attacks will target businesses every 11 seconds by 2021 (up from every 14 seconds in 2019). Infosecurity Magazine
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— According to Cybersecurity Ventures, the latest prediction is that global ransomware damage costs will reach $20 billion by 2021 — that’s 57X more than the costs in 2015. Storage Magazine reports that more than 34 percent of companies do not test their backups. That’s a lot of data security being left to chance. Arcserve
— A majority of small to midsized businesses don’t have a plan in place to effectively deal with a cyberattack. With many SMBs, resources are a factor — they simply don’t have the necessary “people power” or budget to put toward preventing ransomware attacks. IT World Canada
— According to the FBI, attackers have found new ways to exploit the conditions brought on by widespread lockdowns. By mid-spring 2020, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received nearly the same amount of complaints in 2020 as they had for the entirety of 2019. IDG Insider Pro
— As the frequency and intensity of cyberattacks have escalated, there has been a corresponding surge of cyber audit requests from prominent VC and investment firms. Earlier, these investors’ primary focuses during M&A due diligence were financial and legal events. Today, cybersecurity has become an integral part of their scrutiny. The Tech Panda
— Data from Cybersecurity Ventures suggests cybercrime will cost the global economy a steep $6 trillion annually by 2021, representing twice the cost of 2015 levels. It is clear that much remains to be done to protect the gains that digitalization and technological innovation bring to all corners of the world. DarkReading
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— Cybersecurity is seen as a profitable “future industry” that will grow strongly over the next decade with the accelerated digitalization of the global economy. Research firm Cybersecurity Ventures projected that cumulative cybersecurity spending from 2017 to 2025 would come to $1 trillion USD worldwide. This number is expected to rise further following Covid-19. The Edge Singapore
— Security threats are impacting storage managers. As the result of a steep rise in ransomware attacks over the past two years, defending data against malicious software that locks up files until a ransom is paid is now a pressing concern for storage professionals in enterprises of all sizes. Database Trends and Applications
— One of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic is that many organizations have massively accelerated their digital transformation plans, with some compressing strategies that would have played out over years into just a few months. Companies are being asked to ensure that their data is secure, and do this in the face of increasingly strict regulatory environments. ITWeb
— Cybercrime is no laughing matter, and Cybersecurity Ventures is producing a new series of cartoons to prove it. The cartoons cover a range of topics including phishing scams, identity theft, job scams, ransomware and other malware, email and personal privacy, and more. 2 new cartoons are being published every month. Cybercrime Magazine
— It’s not too late for one last summer read. “Women Know Cyber: 100 Fascinating Females Fighting Cybercrime” by Steve Morgan and Di Freeze, a paperback from publisher Cybersecurity Ventures, gets 5 star reviews from readers. The book features a diverse group of female cyber defenders from across the globe. Amazon
More next week.
– From the editors at Cybercrime Magazine
Sponsored by Absolute
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