Cyber Security: Do you feel lucky?

‘There are two types of companies; those who’ve had a breach and those who don’t know they’ve had a breach’ – James Comey, former Director of the FBI

Cyber threats are now a truly global issue. ‘If you live in the UK you’ve probably been hacked, and your personal data has been sold,’ according to Chief Constable Peter Goodman, head of cyber crime for the National Police Chiefs’ Council.

But being a victim of a hack, a virus, or another aspect of cyber-crime is something that happens to other people, right? Sure, it’s in the news a lot but it’s not something that’s going to affect you, right? Right…?

Everyone is at risk from cyber crime

Well if you or anyone in your organisation has ever used Uber, the chances of you being affected have just increased. Recently it has come to light that last year, details of 57 Million credentials were stolen from Uber’s database, a breach they attempted to conceal from those who’s data had been stolen.

In 2016 63% of data breaches resulted from weak or stolen passwords. Let’s say, then two thirds of passwords will again be compromised this year, and two thirds will be compromised next year. How many years do you think you’ll be in that lucky one third?

Billions of identities compromised

Google recently did an extensive search of the ‘dark web’, the place where criminals lurk and illegally trade their wares, and they found 1.2 billion stolen credentials. Your details were probably among them.

But help is at hand and there are some relatively simple measures that you can take to reduce your risk. The first thing to do is to double-lock your digital front door using multi-factor authentication. Passwords alone are not enough to guarantee security.

At Doherty Associates we’ve helped hundreds of customers to understand and to improve their current security posture. If you’d like to know more please get in touch with our team of experts. Or of course you could just roll the dice, cross your fingers, and hope that you’ll get lucky.