Leaders in cybersecurity meet rising demand

Article Excerpt

Hackers, organized crime and even state-sponsored actors are increasingly targeting government and business infrastructure, not to mention individuals, to gain access to confidential information. The list of targets is endless but any entity that is digitally connected is vulnerable. E-commerce, commercial supply management and payment systems, critical energy infrastructure, medical records, credit card numbers, passwords, tax data and intellectual property are especially vulnerable. The most common breaches occur when hackers identify flaws in software to penetrate systems—the so-called zero-day attacks. Other common attacks occur when data is uploaded and stored in cloud-based data storage systems or when mobile device operating systems are penetrated. There are also targeted attacks on government or company systems. The dark world of cybercrime With the increasing use of digital files and reliance on digital data by many corporations, data breaches have become more common in the past decade. In the U.S., data breaches increased from 157 million in 2005 to 781 million in 2015. Identity theft is the most…