Lloyd's Issues 2013 Worldwide Business Risk Index - Cyber Security Identified as #3 Global Business Threat
Rochester MI (PRWEB) July 23, 2013 -- When Lloyd’s (formerly Lloyd's of London) issued their third annual Risk Index a few days ago, by far the greatest change was the dramatic leap of cyber security threats from 12th place in 2011 to 3rd place in 2013. Concerns about cyber security placed just slightly lower than high taxation and loss of customers in the overall business risks as identified by the C-Level executives queried by the venerable insurance carrier. Of course, because customers invariably leave when organizations are breached, customer loss and cyber-theft are intrinsically linked. Thus, two of the top three concerns could be directly related to cyber risk.
“Most Fortune 500 companies have learned to take their security seriously, and now perform regular penetration testing as part of their proactive security approach. Proactive testing measures the effectiveness of existing organizational policies, procedures and solutions. Far too many did not implement effective security policies, perform proactive testing or allocate the required security budget until it was too late, and they suffered an actual cyber event,” said High Bit Security Chief Business Development Officer Barbara Goushaw. “That’s why the Lloyd’s study shows the dramatic ascent of security concerns for businesses today.”
As a result, attackers seeking intellectual property, medical data, identity theft information and credit card data, are shifting their focus to softer targets - those mid-sized organizations that have not adopted the same proactive stance on cyber security. Many of these organizations believe they are under the radar, and too small for hackers to find. Pairing this belief with the assumption that off-the-shelf security measures are sufficient is the recipe for disaster in many organizations.
The market has responded to security threats with a glut of products designed to secure companies from hackers. IT managers face an abundance of security claims from software, hardware, cloud services, hosting providers, monitoring systems, and vulnerability scanning tools and vendors. Determining which will be the most effective can stump even the most experienced CIO. Often, mid-sized companies don’t know where to turn, or how to allocate their limited resources effectively.
“Penetration testing is the best first step in creating a secure posture,” declares High Bit Security COO Adam Goslin. “A penetration testing engagement has the capability to provide insight into the overall security stance for the organization, both externally and internally, providing insight into existing vulnerabilities in the network, host configuration, websites, web services, mobile platform, wireless – everything. Better yet, when a penetration testing engagement is used as a proactive assessment tool, the results should be used to identify shortcomings in organizational policies and procedures as well. We regularly see companies that have spent a fortune on a variety of security products, only to find they still have vulnerabilities. In many cases, the corrections needed from a penetration testing engagement do not involve the need for new hardware or software, but simply modifications to the existing environment. Armed with facts from a complete penetration testing engagement, the IT service provider or existing IT staff can make the business case for effective organizational security changes.”
The entire Lloyd’s Risk Index 2013 can be reviewed at http://www.lloyds.com/riskindex).
About High Bit Security:
High Bit Security is a national security services provider, providing penetration testing solutions to clients who need to protect sensitive data in industries such as Healthcare, Credit Card, Financial, or companies that otherwise store Intellectual Property or Personally Identifiable Information. High Bit Security also provides security consulting services to our clients to assist them with their compliance objectives across PCI-DSS, PA-DSS, HIPAA, SSAE-16 or simply wish to perform a security best practices audit of their organization. Contact High Bit Security today for a free consultation to take steps toward protecting your sensitive information. http://www.highbitsecurity.com 800-757-3144
Barb Goushaw, High Bit Security, LLC., http://www.HighBitSecurity.com, 248-515-9971, [email protected]
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