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"By exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities in devices, hackers can potentially achieve anything from data pilfering, to extortion - which is likely why there has been a step YoY increase. Therefore there is a need to increase awareness around these issues, and to take a realistic approach to combine strong security education with documented best practices and legislative restrictions. Only then can we ensure that our information is secured to the highest standards.

With zero-day attacks such as these, no amount of preparation can fully protect an organisation, so there needs to be a strong emphasis on detection and response, but in addition, making careful design choices when deploying networking tools and security solutions can pay dividends when infrastructure is subjected to such attacks, allowing them to be contained, understood and mitigated before lateral movement can occur.

Cyber hygiene is still absolutely key however, so if your organisation hasn’t discovered and patched its vulnerabilities yet, get patching – once the risks are understood and the key ones are mitigated, it is crucial to enter a virtuous cycle of vulnerability discovery and mitigation in an ongoing vulnerability management process. In the case of organisations without adequate internal resources to achieve this, they should look to outsource this function to skilled, trusted third party service providers.

Given how high the risks are, it is imperative organisations across both the public and private sector take a multi-faceted approach to cybersecurity. Updating their IT infrastructure so that it gets full benefit from the latest cybersecurity solutions, and the discussed regularly patching for vulnerabilities is an obvious first step to build cyber resilience. Cybercriminals have a vast, evolving set of tools at their disposal to take down vulnerable systems; the only way organisations can keep up is if they also update their detection, defence and recovery mechanisms.