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Cybercrime is the largest threat to small, medium and large businesses today. It is evident that even novice hackers have the ability to cause serious havoc and waste companies’ time and money. Recently, the Italian energy company ACEA was subjected to a ransomware attack by the BlackBasta group. The attack froze ACEA's IT systems, causing major disruptions on their website. A few days later, dozens of companies around the world suffered a massive cyber attack, causing alarm and chaos. Are hackers evolving or is negligence the real threat?
The attacks
The attack suffered by ACEA has been apparently caused by a malware, accidentally introduced by an employee who opened a link received by email. By accessing that link, the virus entered ACEA's computers, encrypted their data and locked down their IT systems. The attacks reported by ANSA, on the other hand, have brought TIM and dozens of other IT systems on their knees globally. In addition to Italy, France, and Finland, even the United States of America seems to have suffered enormous disservices. The attack targeted thousands of servers, causing massive slowdowns and disruptions, including ATM malfunctions and major Internet disruptions.
How to protect your business
The attacks reported by the ANSA agency and the ACEA case are a clear signals that cannot be overlooked. Organizations and SMEs must take preventive measures to protect themselves from cybercrime: to implement strong security measures and develop incident response plans. In addition, organizations must ensure that their IT systems are regularly updated to reduce the risk of a cyber attack. In fact, the platform affected in the early February attacks is VMware esxi, a virtualization software used to simulate one or more operating systems on a computer. The news leaked in the days following the attacks is not encouraging. It appears that VMware resolved the vulnerability, which allowed hackers to damage the IT systems of multiple companies two years ago. However, not all the companies have updated their systems with the latest patches provided by VMware.
This shortcoming, in addition to human errors that caused panic in the ACEA services, alarmed a bell. There is a necessary need for continuous improvement at a technical level, as well as recurring company training. If cybercrime does not stop but evolves, we cannot afford to stop, we cannot make any mistake.
Cybersecurity threats
Cybersecurity sector has been constantly growing lately. Everyday cyber attacks are on the agenda. The latest researches present worrying statistics indeed:
- 94% of malwares is delivered via email.
- 85% of cybersecurity breaches are caused by human errors.
- A ransomware attack occurs every 10 seconds.
- Cybercrime's annual global losses are expected to reach $10.5 trillion by 2025.
Also, blockchain’s use cases are endless and understanding the way to make this technology even more efficient is just the beginning.
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