Transcending the border between the physical and cyber realm, terrorism now represents a real threat to your information systems.
Set to rise to one of the top cyber security threats in 2020, cyber terrorism’s ability to cause extensive disruption to organizations of every size means that your IT system may soon become a target.
Whilst the business community’s collective scope regarding potential cyber attacks has been widening, organizations like yours may still be unwittingly leaving themselves receptive to attacks by a new wave of cybercriminal: cyber terrorists.
Cyber criminals vs. cyber terrorists
Cyber terrorists are the new wave of criminal and are particularly dangerous because they will often breach an information system, not necessarily for financial gain, but merely to create chaos and fear. Whilst traditional cyber criminals typically commit their crimes for financial gain, cyber terrorists attack information systems of any size.
Cyber terrorists often establish their groups quickly and with tremendous ease amongst the secrecy of the web. However, there are steps you can take to defend against the new leading form of cyber crime in 2020.
How to protect your business against cyber terrorism
Cyber terrorists act in order to steal and manipulate your organization’s information, as well as, to cause disruption to the overall functioning of your IT systems. Therefore, increased investment in your detective controls can improve your overall defense against intrusion-based attacks.
- Investment in strong antivirus software will help identify viruses and malware before they cause widespread disruption. This investment is particularly important because currently, the most common method of attack adopted by cyber terrorists is virus-infected emails.
- You should focus heavily on proactive monitoring of your IT traffic and your organization’s most valuable information assets. This monitoring also helps identify IT contaminations, as well as check on your patch statuses before any vulnerabilities are exploited. Alongside this, scheduled and spontaneous penetration testing should be a routine occurrence. These small changes to your technical toolkit can deliver huge impacts. However, you should also concentrate on improving your cyber terrorist shield by adopting policies to develop a risk-awareness culture within your organization.
- Cyber terrorism vulnerabilities can often be caused by an overall lack of personnel responsible for security and normal employees who need to be more aware of cyber risk generally. To counter this, you must invest in developing and maintaining a mature risk-aware culture amongst all levels of staff. Make sure sufficient budget is allocated in this area, as building awareness among staff can reduce cyber attacks by 80%. Humans are often considered the weakest part of an organization’s cyber security strategy, thereby, investments into personnel cyber security awareness and cyber hygiene should be a priority.
- Senior-level staff may also benefit from additional cyber crisis training which simulates realistic cyber crisis scenarios to champion productive cyber security behavior in the workplace. Routine cyber terrorism attack drills can evaluate your personnel’s preparedness, understanding and reaction to attacks.
In summary
It is pivotal to decrease vulnerabilities on both the IT and human levels in order to increase your defense against cyber terrorism. Don’t fall victim to cyber complacency. Reach out to the dig8ital team and let us help you protect against cyber terrorism before your information system becomes at risk.
