70% of companies are set to increase their cybersecurity budget

To alleviate this problem, 70% of the companies in Spain (69% worldwide) plan to increase their budget in this area next year, 15 points more than last year, according to the 2022 Digital Trust Survey report carried out by PwC following a survey of over 3,600 executives from 66 countries (141 Spanish).

Which cyberattacks will increase the most according to the consultancy? Globally, for 57% of those surveyed, those related to services in the cloud environment will increase along with those concerning ransomware, followed by malware downloaded through updates and attacks on supply chain software and corporate mail.

The main entry point for these cyberattacks will be through the Internet of Things, that is, devices and machines interconnected through sensors to collect data stored in the Cloud, from mobiles and from Cloud service providers.

How can you protect yourself from cyberattacks?

Cybercriminals are certainly becoming increasingly sophisticated and are constantly looking for vulnerabilities that allow them to access computer systems, causing economic damage. However, many of the risks can be prevented by carrying out a series of controls:

Identification: the first thing to do is to identify the possible vulnerabilities within the organization to detect eventual security flaws and take action.

Proactive: it’s important for companies to switch their reactive culture to a proactive one, establishing preventive response protocols that make access difficult for cyber attackers while monitoring each step.

Perimeter security: it’s worth remembering that most security breaches are not caused by third-party attacks, but by not having taken sufficient internal measures including logins, antivirus, use of firewalls or installation of VPN networks, according to an IBM study. For this reason, good perimeter security must be guaranteed with constant checks and regular scans that will make it more difficult to enter the network and access data.

CISO: the Chief Information Security Officer is a company’s director of information security and, under their leadership, there must be a competent internal technical team which is up-to-date, capable of choosing the most suitable defence systems and keeping them under control and quickly identifying any signs of a threat. The rest of the staff must also receive adequate training and learn to work in accordance with the security regulations.

Cloud: cloud environments, supported by blockchain technology, offer maximum protection of a company’s data since each node is encrypted.

Updates: up-to-date software strengthens companies’ security. That’s why it’s key to be able to rely on technological partners that offer security guarantees in their updates.

At Lantek, we work on providing cloud services through the SaaS model, where we use high encryption standards. What’s more, we have what’s known as mutual authentication, verifications both in the server and in the plant systems. Which is the case with Sherlock, our communication solution between the on premise infrastructure and Cloud.

As we can see, introducing cybersecurity into organizations isn’t all that complicated, the only thing we need to do is be aware that any company, no matter what size, can be the target of a cyber-attack. Another point from the PWC report: 2021 is shaping up to be one of the worst in terms of cybersecurity breaches. It is within our power to avoid it.