Ransomware Continues to Be a Major Cyber Threat

With the wave of data breaches continues to crash down on companies, as per Javelin Strategy & Research, there were 16.7 million victims of identity fraud, a record high that followed a previous record the year before. Criminals are engaging in complex identity fraud schemes that are leaving record numbers of victims in their wake. The amount stolen hit $16.8 billion last year as 30 percent of U.S. consumers were notified exposure to a data breach last year, an increase of 12 percent from 2016. For the first time, more Social Security numbers were exposed than credit card numbers.

Identity theft awareness is at an all-time high due to several very visible incidents in the United States. For the individual victims of identity theft, the repercussions are at best time-consuming and annoying, and at worst, they can be very damaging to one's personal financial history. In addition, another set of victims consisting of retailers and financial institutions have had to absorb millions of dollars due to fraudulent actions by the perpetrators of identity theft.Following the introduction of microchip equipped credit cards in 2015 in the United States, which make the cards difficult to counterfeit, criminals focused on new account fraud. New account fraud occurs when a thief opens a credit card or other financial account using a victim’s name and other stolen personal information. According to the Javelin study, account takeovers tripled in 2017 from 2016, and losses totaled $5.1 billion.

Global Insights Reportfrom Cyberscout says, From rising identity theft and fraud to large-scale enterprise breaches, the news in 2018 was full of cybersecurity nightmares. With cyber incidents now commonplace, consumers have become fed up and are demanding business data privacy regulations. Governments have been responding with a wave of new legislation.

The Impact of identity theft on the enterprise is growing and in 2018, CyberScout received a record number of incident reports across growing business and consumer incident management services. 

We have observed that financial fraud and account takeovers were the two most active forms of cyber events for individuals. For businesses, ransomware and phishing attacks remained the leading forms of attack, and non-targeted attacks are on the rise. The CyberScout Resolution Center employs a unique resolution methodology to protect victims from further harm and affect meaningful resolutions.

Ransomware Continues to Menace Business
 

For the past several years, the business world has watched the threat of ransomware rising. Unfortunately, businesses can expect to see the trend continue this year. Ransomware has become an everyday situation for businesses of all sizes. It can be particularly devastating for smaller businesses that may lack IT resources and effective cybersecurity processes and tools.

Key Findings

    * 2019 CyberScout Global Insights Report summarized global data from 2018 to provide trends and analysis.
    * In 2018 CyberScout fielded 29,638 cases of cyber incidents.
    * Over 30% of the cases were internet-crime driven.
    * Nearly 70% of the incidents that we managed in 2018 were related to some kind of human error.
    * $6,905,771 was the total dollar amount involved in our fraud cases. 

To address this issue, many organizations have established a chief privacy officer (CPO), or have given the responsibility for privacy to a chief security officer (CSO). This type of clear ownership is necessary so that all organization have an unambiguous source of privacy direction within the organization.