Hackers areThe Pirates of Today

Given a digital context, pirates are generally associated with copyright infringement: sharing the intellectual property of others online for free, but seldom thinking of profit. Yet, if we take a historical look at pirates, what type of behavior do we see? Crippling attacks on strongholds. Theft of property. Terror tactics. They raid, they steal and they profit.

While pirates in the Imperial age evaded detection through masterful navigation of the vast open waters, today’s pirates avoid detection by masterful navigation of an open network. But torrent-based, copyright-infringing pirates are not really the biggest threat – the true pirates of today are hackers, and their pirate-army is growing.

Perhaps some of the blame for cyber-attacks could be attributed to the level of IT security some organizations have held themselves to – even the big players.  According to David Kennedy, a hacking expert charged with identifying security risks in the previously-compromised Healthcare.gov website, it took only 4 minutes to access a minimum of 70,000 personal records of Obamacare enrollees – a feat he accomplished directly from his browser.  Or take the notorious Target or Neiman Marcus data breaches; millions of people were affected.

For consumers, experiencing a data breach can be frightening. For organizations, it’s a nightmare.  The bottom-line is that we live a world where security matters – a place where it’s necessary for organizations to protect themselves against data breaches.

There are many ways an organization can prevent data theft and avoid regulatory implications of information loss – as a start, check out these six steps for data breach recovery and prevention.

CSOs and CISOs must become stricter with the security procedures and processes they put in place to ensure their cyber-security framework is strong and compliant. Because the pirates are out there – stealing invaluable information for personal gain. It’s time to batten-down the hatches.

- See more at: http://collaboristablog.com/2014/03/pirates-today-hackers-cyber-attacks-growing/?utm_source=outbrain&utm_medium=outbrain&utm_campaign=outbraincollaboristablog#sthash.BT4qicuy.dpuf