Cybersecurity attacks and data breaches are more common and dangerous than ever. IBM estimated the average financial loss of a data breach last year at $3.86 million.

Cyber-attacks and data breaches cause such losses to the global economy that the World Economic Forum’s 2019 Global Risks Report lists them as the fourth and fifth most serious global risks currently. According to the reports, ransomware damages will amount to more than $11.5 billion in 2020.

Moreover, the report estimates that, on average, every 14 seconds a company will be attacked by ransomware. And it predicts that by 2021, the total global cost of cybercrimes will be around $6 trillion per year. And that’s not even counting the nearly incalculable cost to business reputations around the world.

That’s why it’s more important than ever for organizations to understand their states of cybersecurity readiness.

Ransomware

Ransomware is a form of malware, attackers use to extort money from victims, typically by taking control of their computing systems and blocking their access to files and settings via encryption. To release such blocks, victims must pay the attacker a ransom fee, usually in the form of cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, so that they can gain access to the decryption key they need to unlock the files. Ransomware has been around for ages, but it is a lot more common these days due to the use of cryptocurrency, which allows attackers to maintain their anonymity.

Cryptojacking

Cryptojacking, also known as crypto mining, is the use of a victim’s computer to mine for cryptocurrency. Cryptojackers use the same techniques that attackers use for ransomware: they encrypt the targeted system. In traditional ransomware, at this stage, the user would pay a ransom fee for the decryption key. However, in crypto-jacking, the attacker keeps the system encrypted for as long as possible and uses it to mine for cryptocurrency.

Internet of Things (IoT) device threats

Nowadays, the world is becoming ever more connected with each passing day, as companies develop newer technologies to bring quality-of-life improvements with the aid of IoT devices. However, as often happens with cybersecurity, the more a technology is connected, the more it is vulnerable to cyberattacks.

Data breaches

A data breach happens when an unauthorized party takes advantage of a vulnerability to gain access to sensitive or valuable data such as user and credit card information, usernames and passwords. Data breaches are not a new threat by any means.

Mobile malware

People typically give less attention to the security status of their mobile devices, which makes them a prime target for cyber attacks. While Many organizations adopt Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions, this approach is not so popular as it tends to raise a lot of privacy concerns from employees.

The biggest concern in terms of mobile device vulnerabilities is older software. This is mostly an Android issue, as only around 10% of all devices that run the Google operating system use the latest software version.

While cybersecurity threats continue to grow both more numerous and sophisticated, organizations around the world are hard at work developing more secure defenses. If you combine a variety of tools and practices to secure your network and data, you should be able to reasonably fend off the more devastating forms of cyberattacks and mitigate the damage in the event a breach does occur.

However, given that the cybersecurity landscape is constantly evolving, it is imperative to keep track of developments so you can keep up with emerging threats and apply the relevant solutions in time.