TRENDING
"If you’re an IT security
professional, you need to
understand your potential
cyber enemy and the current
threat landscape so you can
anticipate risk, determine your
likelihood of being hacked,
and the resulting impact when
(not if) it happens."
potential cyber enemy and the current threat landscape so
you can anticipate risk, determine your likelihood of being
hacked, and the resulting impact when (not if) it happens,”
states cloud and security solution specialists, F5 in its
Demystifying the threat landscape White Paper.
According to internetlivestats.com, around 40% of the world
population has an Internet connection today. In 1995, it was
less than 1%. The number of Internet users has increased
tenfold from 1999 to 2013 – first billion was reached in 2005,
the second billion in 2010, and the third billion in 2014.
With the rise of the Internet and connectivity, attacks on
applications have also become ever more complex, forcing
organisations to transform the traditional security perimeter to
include the new everyday reality of users accessing applications
from anywhere, at any time, and from any device.
T
wo significant events happened recently. One positive,
the other, cripplingly negative. First the good: The
International Labour Organization recently recognised
cybersecurity as a part of World Day for Safety and Health at
Work, as being hacked does not just put company’s assets or
reputation at risk, but can also affect people’s health.
Now, for the bad and ugly: The recent cyber devastation
that made companies worldwide weep: the WannaCry
ransomware, which in mid-May crippled computers in at
least 150 countries. According to cyber risk modelling firm
Cyence, the attack caused an approximate loss of R52 billion
revenue. Other groups are estimating the losses to be a
great deal higher.
“In a time of changing and ever-present cyberattacks, it’s
crucial for every business to know where its risks lie. If you’re
an IT security professional, you need to understand your
www.intelligentcio.com
F5 in its 2017 The State of Application Delivery Report
notes, “There’s a focus on a holistic approach to application
security that protects the app from DDoS and DNS attacks
and defends the company from fraud, as well as mitigates
traditional application security flaws.”
The report surveyed participants about their strategies to
defeat emerging threats, secure their applications and protect
their data – and found that the top five security challenges
are attack sophistication (50%), employees (44%), lack of
skills (34%), mobile app security (32%) and complexity of
solutions (30%).
Worth mentioning is that the survey revealed increases
in preferences for managed/ as a Service offerings with
respect to security (DDoS, WAF, and so on), “which likely
arise as a result of organisations’ inability to find staff to
address security struggles.” Previous challenges however saw
reductions in the survey, including budgetary concerns, which
dropped from 41% in 2016 to 30% in 2017.
“We suspect that this is due to security budgets rising
across industries as the importance of securing data and
INTELLIGENTCIO
17