Tuesday, July 31, 2012

How Big a Problem Is Hacking?

Statistics where hacking is concerned are hard to come by for a couple of reasons. First, most companies don't like to admit that they have been hacked. Such an admission can lead to public backlash and loss of trust among a company's customer base, so usually, only the very highest profile cases make the news.

Second, because oftentimes, unless the intent of the hacker was to outright destroy data, the successful incursion may never be detected at all, or if it is ultimately detected, it could be weeks, months, or even longer before anybody in the company even knows about it, much less figures out what information was viewed, copied, or taken.

Taken together, this makes gathering statistics on the number of hacking attempts worldwide a pretty daunting task, but the best information we have on the topic indicates that a successful hacking attempt occurs about every twenty seconds. By the time you finish reading this short article on the topic, half a dozen or more companies will have been hacked, and of course, that only estimates the successful incursions.

Unsuccessful attempts are vastly more common, and occur at a rate many times higher than the rate of successful breeches, which begs for the question to be asked: How safe is your system? How safe is your company's data? How confident do you feel in the network security you have in place, to ward off all but the most determined attacks?

Perhaps it is a thing you've not spent much time thinking about, and if that is the case, and if your company's web portal and your network as a whole are of some import to you, then I would urge you to have an independent evaluation done as soon as you can, and at least once a year thereafter. Once every twenty seconds. Don't let the next victim be you.

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