As businesses large and small become more dependent on electronic data, a major focus has shifted towards information security. Businesses are investing more than ever to protect themselves from dozens of security threats, from malware infections to financial fraud.
In a survey of businesses worldwide almost every industry surveyed had experienced an information security-based incident at some point in time. In the survey conducted, respondents covered numerous industries with the majority being from the Information Technology side and making up 10.9% of all those surveyed. This is followed by industries such as financial services, education, the Federal Government, health and manufacturing, in that order, among others. 41% of this mix admitted to having faced a security threat.
From 2007 to 2010, the kind of attacks, although the same, have risen in occurrence.
- Malware infections are up to 67.1%
- Phishing is at 38.9%
- Device theft stands at about 33.5%
- Other forms have been bots on the network, insider abuse, denial of service, password sniffing, financial fraud and misuse of wireless networks.
Almost 75% of major organizations today encourage staff to use their personal devices to connect to corporate systems. In small businesses, this stands at 61%. As a result, almost 82% of large companies have reported a breach of security by their own staff.
As information security becomes more of a priority in the future, here are a few things your organization can start doing now to protect itself:
- Implement a privacy and data security plan
- Conduct an inventory of potential data targets
- Develop a privacy policy
- Protect data collected online
- Create levels of security
- Plan ahead for data loss
A Network Security plan is also needed, and of course the ability to create strong passwords is a must to better handle security issues.
Source: http://businessdegrees.uab.edu/resources/infographics/mis-security-infographic/
