Cybersecurity has become a serious worry for organizations all around the world in recent years. With the entire cost of cybercrime expected to exceed $8 Trillion (with a T, not a B) by 2023, it’s no surprise that cybersecurity is on the minds of executives across all businesses and geographies.
Despite increased attention and funding for cybersecurity in recent years, assaults have only gotten more numerous and serious. While threat actors are growing more skilled and coordinated, this is only one piece of the puzzle in understanding why cybercrime is on the increase and what organizations should do to stay secure.
An abundance of cyber spending, a scarcity of cyber security
It’s tempting to believe that the solution to the cybersecurity problem is more money—hiring more security professionals, and investing in more tools and technology. If only it were that easy.
For starters, skilled cyber specialists are in limited supply. According to (ISC)2, there are 3.4 million vacant cyber roles globally, a 26% growth year on year from 2020 to 2021. Moreover, approximately 70% of cybersecurity employees “believe their firm lacks sufficient cybersecurity staff to be effective.” Consequently, even if a company has the resources to recruit a small army of cybersecurity professionals, they may be unable to discover them.
Moreover, evidence from recent years reveals that firms are increasing their investments in cybersecurity year after year. According to Gartner, global spending on security and risk management will increase by more than 11% in 2023, reaching $188 billion from $158 billion in 2021. This trend is likely to continue, with global cybersecurity investment expected to rise 11% every year until 2026, reaching $267.3 billion.
Despite these huge increases in investment and many firms acquiring a multitude of commercial-off-the-shelf security solutions—one survey revealed that the typical organization has 76 security technologies deployed—breach of corporate networks, systems, and data is becoming increasingly common.
Breach incidents are growing more common – and more expensive.
It goes without saying that cybercrime is a major problem, but how bad is it? According to certain research, the number of cyber assaults in 2022 would be 38% greater than the previous year. This follows a reported 50% year-on-year increase from 2020 to 2021.
While not all of these assaults are sophisticated or targeted, the sheer volume of strikes increases the likelihood that one will go undetected- and it only takes one successful attack for a business to incur substantial expenses and reputational harm.
All too frequently, firms respond to cyber breaches only after the assault has advanced, leaving little information about how the breach happened and what the threat actors may be wanting. This causes security teams to scramble to catch up, slowing response and recovery operations.
Regrettably, as the time it takes to resume normal operations rises, so does the expense of the event. The typical firm takes 277 days to properly discover and contain a data breach, according to the IBM Cost of a Data Breach study for 2022. The average cost of a data breach is now $4.35 million.
To provide companies the capacity to anticipate dangers, implement preventative policies, and enhance agility to identify and eradicate threats as rapidly as feasible, a strategy change is required.
The journey to effective intelligence
Any firm with a digital presence will be subjected to cyber threats. The most successful strategy is to detect and respond to an assault as soon as feasible. The sooner a danger is identified and neutralized, the less likely it is that the assault will be effective and cause harm to the business.
Thus the issue is, how can companies reduce the time it takes to detect and combat a threat? The solution is impactful intelligence, which increases risk visibility and allows cyber agility in responding to and eliminating threats.
In the area of information security, it is frequently stated that threat intelligence must be “actionable.” Indeed, but this is only one component of what defines valuable intellect. Intelligence must be effective in today’s hostile threat scenario.
Four characteristics are required for effective threat intelligence:
- Accurate – True and correct intelligence is required.
- Relevance – the intelligence must be applicable to the organization.
- Actionable – the organization must be able to take action to combat the danger.
- Cost Effective – the threat’s cost must be greater than the cost of mitigation.
This new approach represents a much-needed change away from viewing cybersecurity as only a technical problem and towards viewing cybersecurity as a business challenge that must be tackled in an efficient and cost-effective manner. Threat intelligence can no longer be considered a cost; it must now be viewed as a business enabler that adds real value to the firm.
With the Argos Edge platform, Cyberint, a prominent threat intelligence company based in Israel, is pushing the transformation to effective intelligence. Check out this webinar on the Road To Impactful Intelligence with Cyberint CEO Yochai Corem to discover more about Cyberint’s revolutionary approach to threat intelligence.
When it comes to cybersecurity, there are always risks, but meaningful intelligence greatly minimises the possibility of a costly breach and increases security posture to the fullest extent feasible. The moment has come for powerful intelligence.