Top 5 Business Benefits of Cybersecurity Services

Top 5 Business Benefits of Cybersecurity Services

Businesses today are more digitalized and connected than ever. Transactions using computers are now preferred over papers and pens and emails are preferred over snail mails.

Businesses have increasingly relied on this digitalized and connected ecosystem – and so does threat actors. This digitalized and interconnected ecosystem has exposed businesses to vulnerabilities, making cybersecurity services – a combination of human expertise and cutting-edge technology – more important than ever.

Here are the top 5 business benefits of cybersecurity services:

1. Predict Cyber Threats

As businesses transition from papers and pens to computers, new security challenges have opened up for businesses. An effective and sound cybersecurity service has the insight or intelligence on the threats faced by businesses such as knowing that digital documents such as personally identifiable information and intellectual properties have become attractive targets of cybercriminals.

An effective cybersecurity officerhas the foresight to separate a business network that houses sensitive staff and customer data from the network that houses non-sensitive data, predicting that in the event of a comprise in the non-sensitive data network, the sensitive or critical network won’t be affected or accessed by attackers.

2. Block Cyber Threats

An effective cybersecurity service helps block cyber threats from ever getting through your organization’s IT systems. As businesses transition from snail mails to emails, attackers have weaponized the business emails to conduct fraud.

Spoofed emails of CEOs, emails that appear that they come from legitimate CEOs though, in fact, they come from attackers, have tricked a number of finance personnel worldwide in releasing corporate funds to scammers in a cybercrime called Business E-mail Compromise (BEC). The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)in June 2018 release a public alert warning businesses about BEC, which at the time of the alert already victimized over 78,000 businesses worldwide and resulted in the combined total loss of over $12 billion.

In a BEC attack, attackers may spoof email accounts, for instance, do slight variations on legitimate addresses such as from john.kelly@abc_company.com to john.kelly@abc-company.com, fooling the email receiver into thinking that the email is authentic. An effective email filtering system can prevent this form of attack from happening by blocking emails with extensions that are similar to the company email. For example, legitimate email of abc_company.com would flag spoof email of abc-company.com.

3. Detect Cyber Threats & Respond

Predictive and blocking cybersecurity measures aren’t enough defenses as cybercriminals are getting more creative and effective each day. There’s always a possibility that no matter how hardy your organization’s predictive and blocking systems are, an anomaly may happen, allowing an attacker or attackers to get inside your organization’s network.

Verizon’s 2018 Data Breach Investigations Reportfound that illegal remote point-of-sale (POS) intrusions often occur in the accommodation and food services industry and weren’t discovered for months in 96% of cases. Businesses only discovered about these intrusions after being informed by law enforcement or through Common Point of Purchase (CPP).

Even Tesla wasn’t spared when attackers used the tech giant’s computing resources to mine cryptocurrency. Tesla also knew about the illegal use of its computing resources for cryptocurrency mining when RedLockdiscovered the intrusion and informed Tesla about it.

In the case of the Tesla intrusion, an effective cybersecurity service could have detected the illegal cryptocurrency mining on Tesla’s resources by monitoring network traffic and correlating it with configuration data, RedLock found.

4. Cybersecurity Services Save Money

An effective cybersecurity service saves businesses an enormous amount of money. The 2018 Cost of Data Breach Study: Global Overviewcommissioned by IBM and conducted by Ponemon Institute found that Canada has the highest data breach direct costs at $81 per compromised record. Direct costs in the study refer to the expense outlay to accomplish a given activity such as engaging forensic experts, hiring a law firm, or offering victims identity protection services.

The study also found that Canada has the highest data breach detection and escalation costs, referring to forensic and investigative activities, assessment and audit services, crisis team management, and communications to executive management and board of directors. 

5. Enable Businesses to Gain Access to Cutting-Edge Tools and Top Security Talent

There are 3 types of managed cybersecurity services:

• traditional
• cloud solution
• outsourced

Traditional cybersecurity services refer to on-premise services, requiring in-house manpower and capitalization for cutting-edge hardware and software tools.

In a cloud solution, cybersecurity is managed through cloud-based console and tools, without the need for additional hardware.

In outsourced model, an external third-party cybersecurity service provider, also known as Managed Service Provider (MSP), takes care of everything. Each of these services has its own benefits and budgetary impacts.

In the case of traditional or on-premise cybersecurity services, budget isn’t limited to trained and skilled in-house cybersecurity staff, but also to the growing IT infrastructure complexity. The growing volume of devices, for instance, that need to be secured is a key challenge for businesses.

Cloud-based security service allows your organization to manage multiple endpoints, file servers and mobile devices remotely, from anywhere. In an outsourced or third-party cybersecurity service, your organization, regardless of its size, gains access to the best security talent with greater scalability and continuity.

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