Crimes on the internet are fast moving and agile. The cyber criminals are robust that many companies with vast and complex hierarchical structures can be too inert and sluggish for them.
Cyber criminals have become intelligent and stealthier by the day. And as a result, many companies are becoming increasingly susceptible to malicious online threats. In an effort to enhance their operations, businesses are adopting the latest technologies. However, more technologies adopted also translate to more vulnerabilities and points of entry for attack.
Ultimately, these organizations are becoming highly attractive and viable prospects for criminals.Some cyber criminals may hack into big companies for the massive data they have, while others may find small companies as a good target.
Many companies, mainly large enterprises, have thrust themselves into an IT security war and the cyber criminals are still gaining the upper edge. Does a counterattack measures can be an option? Below are some reasons that this might not work.
Cross-Border Legislation
New cyber crime laws and the specialist divisions that enforce them have been rendered mostly redundant. Due to the internet reaching worldwide, cyber criminals work at a global nature, making these laws are often stretched beyond their geographical jurisdiction, thus significantly undermining their ability to protect businesses against threats that often originate abroad.
Cybercrime legislation differs nationally and even regionally in some cases – what might be illegal in the victim's location might be legal in the culprit's location, and this lack of seamless cross-border legislation significantly gives the cyber criminals an advantage.
The fact that top governments struggle to convict cyber criminals means there is even less of a deterrent to cease their activity.
The Abundance of Resources
Cyber criminals have evolved into sophisticated planners and slick executors; the malicious processes that they deploy are supported by a wealth of easily accessed tools on the black market, making these people well-resourced to target businesses. The emphasis is shifting from quantity to quality of infection.
One of the many ways that the black market sustains this new ethos is by supplying exploit testing services. These quality assurance measures guarantee new malware will bypass popular antivirus softwares by pre-scanning it against all of the most up-to-date malware signature databases. This allows them to be strategically efficient in doing their activities, making it a reason why they are usually steps ahead of organizations they are aiming to breach.
Fast, Robust and Agile
The characteristics of cyber criminals are for their robustness and agility. Companies that usually have complex hierarchical structures and trained IT security professionals have too much to handle making them usually, and realtively, slow to react in term of decision making.
Multiple layers of management delay how reactive firms can be during IT infrastructure attacks, putting them into a more open space for criminal networks to exploit. To protect themselves at even half the speed that criminals move, corporations must re-arrange rigid internal arrangements to be more flexible.
Zero-Day Exploits
Many companies think that an investment in one antivirus software solution will address all the security issues they need. This is a misconception that is not only dangerous but keeps companies at perpetual risk.
The reality is that cyber criminals innovate at a faster pace than security firms, and many antivirus programs only detect threats that have already been discovered as opposed to zero-day exploits, attacks that target previously unknown vulnerabilities, have no signature written for them and pose the most danger.
Usually companies realize that their system is breached when they see that their systems detect something unusual. Problems regarding computer security usually means that the attack is already done.
Business Collaboration and Isolation
Companies tend to isolate their operations when it comes to cyber security. This can be a solution to many but however, they usually fail to properly collaborate in order to unite against their common enemy.
The benefits of collaboration can be gleaned from the financial sector, which in recent years implemented several simulated "cyber-drills" to bolster industry-wide safeguarding against what it acknowledges as one of its greatest dangers.
Collaboration on this scale would equate to an overall higher standard of protection for commercial industries, yet the reluctance to share best practice will keep companies at the mercy of cyber criminals.