Author: neil

As cyberattacks proliferated this year, the most recent ones around the world have taken down operations at medical facilities, grocery chains, and gasoline pipelines plus potentially put some intelligence agencies in compromising situations. But they have been a bonanza for cybersecurity start-ups. These companies that sell security products and services have a bigger market and mission than ever before. So far, breaches have fueled concerns among companies and governments, leading to increased spending on these products. Investors have poured more than $12.2 billion into start-ups that ensure their cloud security, identity verification and privacy protection.

The money is flooding into those that are getting to grips with hackers in new ways. Traditionally, security systems at companies relied on the idea of securing a perimeter such as firewalls to protect access to their corporate network. But a shift to cloud computing over the past several years has rendered the perimeter and dependency on corporate networks obsolete. The pandemic provided momentum when people shifted to remote work, which required securing remote access systems.

Other internet security businesses have also benefited. One in particular that makes sure users are who they say they are when they join a platform, collected $394 million last month.

In conclusion, with security start-ups going public or being acquired for large sums, and cybersecurity threats mounting, the financial gain is likely to continue. When something like this hits the average person’s mind, people realize that this is definitely here to stay.

Although it is one of the world’s biggest consultancy firms, Accenture wasn’t spared from being targeted by ransonmware gang Lockbit. The firm has confirmed the incident and Accenture spokesperson Stacey Jones said in a statement, “We immediately contained the matter and isolated the affected servers. We fully restored our affected systems from back up. There was no impact on Accenture’s operations, or on our clients’ systems.”

LockBit has targeted thousands of organisations since being active in September 2019. They have claimed responsibility for the attack last Tuesday. According to cybercrime monitoring firm Cyble, August 12 was the ransom deadline and they demanded $50 million for 6 terabytes of data. 

Paying of ransoms is strongly discouraged by cyber experts. One of the reasons is because ransom payers don’t necessarily get all their data back, and it is highly likely that what they do get back cannot be trusted.

Since most consulting firms sell technology and cybersecurity services to their clients, they need to be critical against security threats. If they can’t prevent breaches of their own operations then how can clients be assured that they can be trusted to offer quality service, especially in keeping sensitive information. Breaches can and do occur but they need to be vigilant in maintaining the highest cyber defenses.

Mastercard conducted a survey on new payments across 18 markets globally and a majority of consumers polled said they were willing to consider cashless methods such as digital or mobile wallets, QR codes and even cryptocurrencies on e-commerce sites. Sandeep Malhotra, executive vice president of products and innovation for Asia Pacific at Mastercard said, “Ninety percent of the consumers have tried at least one emerging payment type in the last year. And out of those, two thirds of them have actually done it for the first time. And 60% of the consumers would like to shy away from the merchants who do not offer electronic payments of any kind”.

Threats over cyber security have become a growing concern as more people turn to payments online. According to the survey, one out of four consumers have experienced some kind of a fraud last year. And just because everybody was staying home, there was a good 49% increase in cybercrime.

As a result, Mastercard has taken a number of measures to build consumer confidence when using its credit cards for online payments. They are creating safe and secure solutions, and offering that comfort to the customer. Whether it’s using biometrics or using different kinds of verification methods beyond pins and passwords. And that is the assurance the consumer is looking for.

At the end of the day, the consumers have to be aware what their information is being used for. It’s safe to say there is greater awareness now, with the data protection act, about what kind of information that they should give to platforms that are collecting those data.