Cybercrime on the Rise: What You Need to Know
You can't miss the headlines: over 143 million Americans - half the adult population in the U.S. - had their personal information, including social security number, date of birth and driver's license number, accessed this spring by cybercriminals successfully attacking Equifax, the giant consumer credit reporting agency. This massive breach, just now coming to light, highlights the pervasive and heightening threat of cybercrime and the fact that no one, from individuals to global corporations, is immune.
What type of cyberattacks should businesses be prepared for?
In our latest firm video, Dennis Wickham, leader of SCMV's Cyber Planning & Response Practice Group, describes the type of attacks that can affect businesses, including:
- Using ransomware to lock up computers and phones so that data and work product can't be accessed. Data is not stolen, but the rightful owner has no access to their technology or information.
- Stealing data for criminal use. Examples are breaches of health care organizations or banks - or, most notably to date, Equifax - where highly-sensitive data is stolen, sold and used to commit additional crimes. Such breaches have long-lasting and extremely serious implications for the businesses affected and their customers.
- A combination of the two attacks. What looks like a ransomware attack turns out to involve theft of data as well - which may not be immediately evident.
As Dennis notes, cyberattacks are not an IT issue; they have become a critical business management issue.
Managing Cyberattacks
Having a cybersecurity prevention and response plan is an important tool for all businesses. Even before your systems are hacked and confidential data is compromised, you must be ready to respond in a proactive manner that will result in the least amount of downtime to your operations and damage to your business and your reputation.
SCMV's new Cyber Planning & Response Practice Group can assist businesses in planning and implementing cyber-related policies, in a privileged environment, to address the risk and exposure to both foreign and domestic criminal enterprises.
The SCMV team can also help you evaluate cyber insurance policies, provide incident response services if you are the victim of an attack and assist with the numerous legal obligations that result from a cyberattack.
For more information about our new Cyber Planning & Response Practice Group and how we are assisting businesses, please contact Practice Group Leader Dennis Wickham at 619.685.3135 or wickham@scmv.com.