The importance of cybersecurity is paramount in our digital age. However, the talent gap for cybersecurity professionals continues to grow as many companies de-prioritize cybersecurity and its corresponding costs due to economic and cost-saving concerns.
According to a recent study from (ISC)2, a leading nonprofit cybersecurity organization for professionals, the cybersecurity talent gap broadened by a hefty 26.2% this past year alone. This equates to roughly 3.4 million unfilled cybersecurity positions worldwide.
Now compare these statistics with those related to cybercrime. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, cybercrime – everything from ransomware attacks to fraud and data theft – is up a staggering 600%.
There’s a clear disconnect between corporate cybersecurity concerns and the growing proliferation of cyberattacks worldwide. As many countries continue passing stricter privacy and security laws and implementing new regulatory requirements, cybersecurity should be front and center in terms of business prioritization rather than a mere afterthought.
Cybersecurity is the deployment of people, processes, and policies to protect organizations and their critical systems and sensitive information from digital-based attacks. It’s a crucial function for any business with an IT footprint, or those that handle internal and customer data. Professionals in these positions represent the first and sometimes only line of defense against nefarious attackers looking to hack, steal, or defraud companies and their data.
While building out a strategic approach to cybersecurity isn’t cheap, the costs stemming from a cyberattack prove far greater. By 2025, it’s predicted that cybercrime will cost companies $10.5 trillion annually. This is undoubtedly due to the lack of seasoned cybersecurity professionals to detect and mitigate against these attacks. The World Economic Forum’s 2020 Global Risk Report states the rate of detection for cyberattacks in the U.S. is a paltry 0.05%.
These threats are only becoming more frequent and malicious. Cybersecurity Ventures reports that a business fell victim to a ransomware attack every 11 seconds in 2021. And according to IBM, it can take a company between six to seven months to even discover a breach, and then another two months to contain it without the proper cybersecurity guardrails in place.
A study of cybercrime conducted by Accenture found that nearly half (43%) of cyberattacks target small businesses due to their vulnerability and general lack of cybersecurity protocols and staff. In fact, only 14% of these businesses are prepared to defend against such attacks.
Much of this relates back to the widening talent gap. Seventy percent of the cybersecurity practitioners surveyed by the (ISC)2 claim their companies don’t have a robust enough cybersecurity arm to be truly effective. Nearly half report their teams don’t even have the time to assess risks, forcing them to make procedural oversights to compensate for this shortage of staff and resources.
It goes without saying that a single cyberattack can disrupt all of a business’s day-to-day operations. However, longer-term consequences, such as damage to IT infrastructure or data assets, can prove nearly impossible to remedy without proper planning and mitigation strategies. Four key areas businesses suffer the most include:
As many companies are looking to continue cutting costs in anticipation of an economic recession, a concerning trend is emerging. With the threat landscape more robust than ever and the damage caused by cyberattacks ever-worsening, cybersecurity simply cannot be viewed as another expense. Rather, it should be viewed as a fundamental priority for protecting a business and its customers.
The companies poised to come out on top are the ones that adopt a security-first mindset. That means building security into the fabric of your products and solutions. At Nylas, security is our top priority and the cornerstone of our platform. We’re committed to ensuring the unwavering safety of your company’s data. With security built directly into our infrastructure from the start, our customers can rest assured knowing their data is safe, secure, and protected.
Regulatory requirements around the use, security, and privacy of data also continue to be enacted worldwide. This creates more potential consequences for companies who skirt on cybersecurity, beyond simply leaving themselves more vulnerable to cyberattacks. Those that are attacked and have their customers’ data breached could face hefty fines and lose the trust and loyalty of their customers en masse.
This is why Nylas adheres to the most rigorous security and compliance standards, including GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 1 Type I, SOC 2 Type II, FINRA, and more. Our mission is to ensure that every single customer is confident that their company and customer data is safeguarded under the Nylas platform.
It can be difficult to make the hard choices when it comes to savings and cost-cutting. However, cybersecurity in any respect will always be worth it. The consequences of a cyberattack are far more costly and detrimental than investing in the professionals and solutions necessary to mitigate cyberattacks. When carving out your budgets for 2023 and beyond, your safest bet is investing in cybersecurity now…before it’s too late!
You can learn more about how Nylas maintains customer trust by encrypting our customers’ data through a multi-layered physical and technical security program by downloading our enterprise security white paper here.
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