News
Cybersecurity Expert commentary: Cybersecurity Awarness Month
September 2023 by Steven Wood, Director, EMEA and APAC at OpenText Security Solutions
Earlier this year the Official Statistics Cyber security breaches survey 2023 revealed that cyber security has dropped down the priority lists that thanks to the unstable economic conditions and uncertainty in the future.
Yet as the digital ecosystem grows ever more treacherous, cybersecurity attacks remain a continued and very present threat. Cybersecurity Awareness Month in October serves as a reminder to prioritise cybersecurity despite the unpredictable conditions that businesses will be facing in the coming months.
Steven Wood, Director – Solution Consulting at OpenText Cybersecurity shares his thoughts on the current cyber landscape, as it evolves at lightning speed and focuses on why increasing cybersecurity awareness is imperative to mitigating risk and protecting against future cybersecurity attacks.
“The cyber landscape continues to evolve at lightning speed – with the ongoing proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools fuelling an increased number of targeted attacks and scams. Large language models and generative AI is opening the door for attackers with lower skillsets to achieve new capabilities through the generation of malicious code, malware distribution and automated remote execution.
Whilst AI speeds up the velocity of attacks across the threat landscape, updated versions of cybersecurity frameworks such as the Cyber Essentials (UK), NIST (US) and NIS (EU) are helping businesses to develop better security postures. The increased uptake of cybersecurity insurance also demonstrates an increased level of awareness and helps to re-inforce best practices – with the incentive to avoid excess payouts and costly downtime.
To increase cybersecurity awareness, companies need to continue to focus on good IT hygiene and adopt one of the frameworks to help create a stronger security posture. As part of training programmes, IT teams should consider practicing their response to a cyber incident by running mock trial scenarios, with all business functions included in the exercises. Only by doing so will organisations be able to develop internal cyber awareness and reactive responses to protect customers, data and revenue.
It’s no long a case of if a cyber incident will occur, but more a case of when – preparation is the best way organisations can mitigate modern of cyber security risk.”
