Cybercrime: Are You Really A Target?
Businesses can no longer ignore the threat posed by cybercrime. Recent estimates suggest that cybercrime damage is likely to cost businesses over $2 trillion by 2019. As cybercrime becomes more prolific and increasingly sophisticated, affecting large and small businesses alike, a more nuanced understanding of the threat at hand is called for.
The world of cybercrime and cyber criminals is largely split into two camps; Organised cybercrime and Cyber espionage (leaving state-owned attacks out for now).
Organized cybercrime
At the most basic level we see cybercriminals forming organized crime circuits to gain access to sensitive financial information. By exploiting weaknesses in WiFi connections, they are able to target businesses as well as individuals.
Today’s profit-driven cybercriminals are strategic and well organized. A recent study by McAfee indicates that in 2013 40 million people in the U.S., 54 million in Turkey and 16 million in Germany had their personal information stolen in cyber attacks. This aspect of cybercrime has quickly become a multifaceted, global phenomenon.
Are you a target? Yes. Anyone who uses public wifi and cellular connections is a potential target.
Cyber espionage
While certain cyber attacks may be easy to detect and contain, others like cyber espionage can go undetected until long after the initial security breach. More and more companies, particularly those that make use of unprotected public WiFi hotspots, are falling prey to corporate spies who use the technology at their disposal to intercept communication and steal company information.
A study conducted by Verizon found that cyber espionage occurrences tripled in 2014 to reach 511 of which an estimated 306 cases resulted in significant data breaches, 49% of which were traced to China and Korea.
Are you a target? Yes. Anyone handling sensitive information and uses wifi or cellular connectivity is a target. Corporate employees that travel abroad often, especially to Eastern Europe and Asia are a target in particular.
Tackling cybercrime head-on
Businesses should be focusing beyond risk management to prevention. There are proactive steps companies and individuals can take to attack cybercrime head-on.
Staying clear of WiFi is one of the best ways to prevent an attack. Using a VPN can also be an effective way to stay safe while connected to a WiFi hotspot, although proxy sites aren’t without their fair share of controversy. One researcher found that of all the VPN services he surveyed, 79 percent forbid secure, HTTPS traffic..
Paying attention to SSL certificates can be helpful as well, but isn’t without its own risks. By exploiting the SSL protocol, cybercriminals are able to trick a host server into sending sensitive data including encryption keys. A user’s only defense is to check a website’s SSL certificate. But once again, this isn’t foolproof.
Adapt or die
As cybercrime awareness increases, so too does the demand for viable cyber security products and services. An IDC report indicates that this market has increased from $53 billion in 2011 to $58 billion in 2013.
Currently almost all solutions available on the market fall short. Desperate, many business resort to either encapsulation or end-to-end encryption. While a good idea in theory, encapsulation fails because it’s easy for hackers to go undetected until the damage is already done. As for end-to-end encryption, the problem is that with enough time even the most secure encryption can be bypassed.
That’s where CoroNet comes in. This lightweight software solution not only detects malicious networks in real-time but prevents devices from connecting to hotspots that have been compromised. Unlike other solutions, CoroNet goes beyond the computing layer to provide protection at the radio layer.
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