Cybercrime is not new. It has been around as early as the 70s and will continue to threaten the world. Experts predict that by 2021, cybercrime will cost the world US $6 trillion dollars. To put that into perspective, US $6 trillion can buy some 13,869 Airbus A380s, enough to form a line to the moon and back 5 times when parked nose to tail.
IT security is becoming increasingly important. Here’s a quick history on Cybercrime around the world:
1974: Rabbit virus. Multiplies multiple web servers on computer till the system is clogged and then crashes.
1981: Apple viruses 1,2,3 found on Apple II OS. Spreads through pirated computer games.
1988: The Jerusalem virus. Unleashed every Friday the 13th, affects EXE, COM files and SYS files. It deletes programs running that day. Usually 30-40 minutes after running a programme that’s infected, the virus will slow the computer’s performance significantly.
1991: Tequila virus. Tequila is challenging to identify prior to an attack because it works through a variable encryption algorithm. This allows it to change its appearance every time a computer is booted, infecting files such as EXE as they run.
2000: The Love Bug. A destructive virus that spreads across an infected device. It replaced files such as images, documents and even MP3s with versions of itself. After which, a worm virus would send itself through the form of an email via the victim’s Outlook address book. 45 million computer users were affected.
2005: Commwarrior. A virus that spreads via MMS and Bluetooth platforms on Series 60 phones, appearing as a SIS file. The birth of this virus sparked the start of many phone viruses that would follow thereafter.
2009: Heartland Payment System was hacked, where more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen. This was one of the largest cyber breaches of all time, costing Heartland approximately $32 million in legal fees, settlements and fines.
2016: Mirai botnet DDoS took down much of America’s internet, affecting companies such as Twitter, Netflix, the Guardian, Spotify and Airbnb. The attack had an extraordinary strength of 1.2 Tbps, more than twice as powerful as the closest attack recorded. Experts worry if a similar attack were targeted at banking institutions, the global economy could be in grave harm.
History is known to repeat itself, but you do not have to fall victim to cybercrime. Here are some strategies you can use to protect your organization from cybercrime:
1) Be on guard.
Brief, train and convince staff on the importance of cyber security. Awareness of spams and hacking attempts can heighten the security of your company. In fact, over 30% of security breaches are caused by employee lapses.
2) Test the system.
Deny your company a false sense of security and turn to penetration testing. This is critical as it simulates a highly realistic hacking attempt on your company. This answers the vital question; ‘can we really be hacked’?
3) Vulnerability prioritization.
It is key to access your IT vulnerabilities, prioritizing loopholes that need fixing soonest. Rank both your internal and external IT threats according to severity and tackle the worst first
4) Block, detect and rapidly respond.
IT Security must be proactive, not reactive. A reliable IT solutions provider offers you software that blocks and rapidly move to suppress any cyber attacks on your organisation.
Your IT security expert:
At eVantage Technology, we believe that cyber security should be proactive, convenient and effective. We do so through customised and holistic cyber security solutions for you. In doing so, we have established ourselves as a leading IT Security provider in Singapore.
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