The mobile workforce –army of professionals scattered across various geographical locations who work on connected laptops, smartphones and other devices via the world wide web – is emerging as an easy target of cyber criminals.
While the number of mobile workers is on the rise due to digital transformation, cyber criminals are targeting them by breaking into their devices to steal personal credentials and access codes, eventually to make a way into their companies.
Forcepoint, a Texas-bas?ed cyber security firm, says these criminals are well fu?n?ded and are using ultra modern intrusion technologies to steal data, the most valuable procession.
Earlier most attacks were on enterprise servers and ma?chines, but now the focus is on people. This has made most firms redraft their cyber security policies and include human behaviour-centric practices to protect them from cyber attacks.
Cyber crime is a huge ec?o?nomy and it is much bigger than the physical underwo?rld. New criminal platforms and a booming cyber crime economy have resulted in $1.5 trillion in illicit profits being made, laundered, sp?e?nt and reinvested by cy?b?er cr?iminals, as per an indepe?ndent study by Bromium, a Cupertino-bas?ed firm that develops technologies to lower and eliminate end-point cyber thre?ats like viruses, malware and adware.
Of this $1.5 trillion, illegal online markets accounts for $860 billion, trade secrets and IP thefts $500 billion, data trading $160 billion, crime-ware as-a-serv?ice $1.6 billion and ransomware $1 billion. Large cyber crime operations make over $1 billion per year while smaller operations tend to make between $30,000 and $50,000, the study found.
Yahoo reported incidents of some 3 billion user data breaches in 2013-2014, wh?i?le data of 150 million customers of American foot?we?ar and sportswear brand Under Armour was brea?ched in 2018.
e-Bay reported 145 milli?on breaches in 2014, Equif?ax 143 million in 2017, Target Corporation 110 million in 2013, Facebook 87 million in 2018, JPMorgan Chase 76 million and 7 million small and medium businesses in 2014, PlayStation 77 million in 2011 and Uber 57.6 million in 2016.
Some 4 billion data rec?or?ds of various kinds were sto?len in 2016, as per reports by security blog, Hashedout.
Cyber attack cost the Da?nish container major Maersk $340 million in 2017. It had to replace 4,000 servers, 45,000 PCs and its entire booking system. Some 70 ports worldwide were also disrupted by the attack.
Forcepoint on Wednesday opened a centre of excellence in Bangalore to offer 24/7 cyber security service to its 20,000 clients globally. The company is emerging as a lead player in cyber security market by offering behaviour-based tools and solutions that are self-diagnosing, self-helping and self-heeling. These solutions can be deployed at various levels: critical employee, critical group, critical function, or critical nature of data.
Brian J Miller, senior V-P, customer success and operations, Forcepoint said, “Th?ere is a growing demand for cyber security solutions that understand behaviour requires investment in world-class technical support and services talent. Bangalore wi?ll be a central focus of our services strategy.’’
“It is critical that companies protect their crown jewels, IPs and data. The behaviour-based dynamic security protection systems are able to spot any breach or abnorm?ality in the behaviour of staff. Enterprises are looking at technologies that can converge data generated by vario?us devices plus security ca?meras, face recognition and biometrics,’’ said Tarun Krishnamurthy, V-P, customer success for Asia Pacific and India, Forcepoint.
