Reason behind the Rise in Cyber-Attacks

Posted on: Sep 29, 2022 | 3 mins | Written by: HDFC ERGO Team

Reason behind the Rise in Cyber-Attacks

Published on September 29, 2022. EST READ TIME: 3 minutes

There has been a massive increase in the number of cyberattacks reported not only in India but across the globe. In India, about 1.16 million cyberattacks were reported for the year 2020. And the number is about 3 times the number of attacks that took place in 2019. In other words, every day around 3000 attacks were reported. Buying cybersecurity insurance becomes even more crucial during such times.

What Leads to This?

The trend of increase in cyberattacks was already on the rise. However, the ongoing pandemic has only added to the number of attacks. As work from home has become the norm of the day across the globe, there is a massive amount of dependence on technology and networks. There is a myriad of factors that have led to the rise in cyberattacks. Apart from the heavy dependence on technology and working from home, more countries are adopting 5G connections. The increase in the number of devices that are interconnected is another major reason. Companies have started following new processes and procedures and work environments that are even less controlled these days. Together all these reasons have led to an increase in the number of vulnerabilities.

History of Cybercrime

The first cybercrime took place back in the 1970s and that shows that hackers and bad elements have been around for a long time now. However, the nature of attacks has changed a lot over these years. A decade ago, hackers would attack individuals and demand $100 to $200 for access to data. However, in 2017, hackers showed that they can bring even big corporations down to their knees. There have been attacks on governments and larger companies as well. Since larger companies and industries are now under attack, several federal agencies and even politicians are taking cybercrime a bit more seriously. Cyberattacks these days have a much wider impact and involve even more people. Thereby making cyber insurance policy that much more important.

Recent Cyberattacks

Cybercriminals have adopted several newer tools to launch effective cyberattacks in recent times. Cybercriminals now use phishing, social engineering, malware, identity theft, ransomware, spam emails and whaling to attack their targets. In recent years, there have been quite a few ransomware attacks in the USA and even in India, among a lot of other countries.

One of the biggest infiltrations took place on the East Coast of the USA where the Colonial Pipeline was compromised. Colonial Pipeline is one of the major conduits as far as jet fuel, gas and diesel providers to the East Coast. Similarly, J.B.S also suffered infiltration, which is one of the largest beef suppliers in the country.

Back in India, Air India had reported that some of its servers were compromised, and hackers had access to the personal information of 4.5 million flyers. Another major attack in India was on Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation, in March 2021. It is a part of the smart city project and was handled by Tech Mahindra.

How Ransomware Attacks Take Place

The way ransomware works are quite similar to a lot of other cybersecurity breaches. Businesses that have systems that are connected to the internet are at the forefront of these attacks. This could happen when the software does not contain the latest updates. Or any user clicks on a link that is part of an email that leads the malware into the network of the company. And this malware then acts as the entry point for subsequent attacks.

How to Lower Your Risks

Though there is no foolproof mechanism, there are a few simple things that an organisation can carry out to lower its risks of cybersecurity attacks. Here are some steps that you or your organisation can carry out to lower your risks to some extent.

• Penetration Testing

Carrying out regular penetration testing will help you discover any vulnerabilities or flaws in your system. Early identification will help you to fix the issues before it falls into the wrong hands. Getting control over these vulnerabilities is important since they are usually the entry points for data breaches.

• Cyber Security Policy

Implementing a strong cyber security policy is also important to improve the resilience of your organisation to these attacks. A strong password policy in place is one of the first places that one can start. A strong password usually is of at least 8 characters and a word or phrase that is not part of the dictionary. It should contain lower and upper case characters along with numbers and special characters.

• Encrypting Sensitive Data

Irrespective of whether your data is in transit or at rest, you must encrypt all sensitive information. And it is even more crucial to keep the encryption key safe and only provide access to trusted entities.

• Invest in cybersecurity insurance

Another effective way of reducing your risks or protecting your finances is to invest in a good cybersecurity insurance policy. The policy helps you to recover data in the event of a data breach, network outage, protection during interruption of services and so on.

Why Should You Invest in Cybersecurity Insurance

Here are some prominent reasons, why you must invest in a cybersecurity insurance policy.

• Anyone Can Be A Target

Cybercriminals usually do not look at the scale of a business. Thus, small-scale organisations are equally vulnerable to cyberattacks as large-scale organisations. Since small-scale businesses do not have the finances to hire an IT team to strengthen or protect their data, they are more vulnerable.

• Protect Your Reputation

In the event of a data breach, a cyber insurance policy can help you restore your reputation or retrieve some of the clients as well. Without the policy, you will end up paying a lot of money to mend your reputation or even get back some of the clients.

• Business Downtime

Cyber insurance covers the losses that you might incur due to downtime that is caused by a cyberattack. This will enable your business to grow and provide financial assistance to your employees and customers alike.

• Protect Your Data

If you want to protect the integrity of your sensitive data, getting a cybersecurity policy is important.

Conclusion

Cyber attacks can bring even the mightiest organisations down to their knees. Some attacks look majorly at data while others might even result in interruption of services. If you want to protect your business or organisation from such occurrences, buying cybersecurity insurance is one of the better approaches. Following some of the better practices to enhance the cybersecurity of your organisation along with insurance policy can be a robust approach to the problem. You can even reach out to third-party cybersecurity consultants to help you strengthen your systems and infrastructure.

Disclaimer: The above information is for illustrative purpose only. For more details, please refer to policy wordings and prospectus before concluding the sales.

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