Nobody can afford to ignore the risk, says Dominic Storey
Cyber attack news now, and no organisation can afford to ignore the threat of targeted cyber attacks.
That’s according to Dominic Storey, technical director EMEA at Sourcefire.com. Speaking this week, the expert noted that such focused attacks are on the rise, striking organisations of all shapes and sizes – and is a security risk that shouldn’t be ignored.
"People have a sense that they are now being targeted, rightly or wrongly," said Storey. "Many of these organisations will have experienced it but the ones that haven’t experienced it directly will know somebody who has.
"There’s a sort of gestalt that’s happened in the market, with companies thinking this could be real rather than something that someone’s trying to sell them.
"They’ve seen enough bad things happen that are reported in the press now how organisations have suffered from particular, targeted attacks. [These are] ones where other organisations have had a mandate to extract information from them. No one who is responsible for an organisation is going to ignore this now."
And the expert warned that small firms are not exempt from the risk of attack just because they are small and, relative to the rest of the field, more anonymous.
"Sometimes, you can be a casualty of someone else’s attack, as most people who have had their credit cards compromised can attest to," the expert warned. "You may have no real security issue yourself, but all of a sudden you’re finding yourself having to do a bunch of stuff. In business that can be a major inconvenience even to small business and sole traders."
Which means that IT staff need to be ever aware of the threat of cyber attacks. However, outsourcing services such as document management and storage to a third-party can actually increase security – firms such as Dajon specialise in keeping your data secure, leaving your IT staff free to crawl under desks and troubleshoot.