Cybersecurity Awareness Month Roundup

This year, October marks the 20^th anniversary of Cybersecurity Awareness Month. For most organizations, it’s an acknowledgment and re-emphasis of the things they’ve been focused on all year. IT leaders across industries are bombarded daily with reports of new types of cyberattacks, while often seeing these threats play out within their own and competing organizations. 

In 2023, enterprises are shifting critical data and applications out of on-premises servers and into the cloud — and the increasing adoption of AI has led to explosive growth in data volume. The desire for remote and hybrid workforce solutions — in response to the greatest workplace disruption in generations — has further widened the attack surface for cybercriminals. It’s not an exaggeration to say that during this Cybersecurity Awareness Month, it has become imperative for enterprises of all sizes to reexamine and significantly enhance their cyber defense posture. 

Meanwhile, according to the Fortinet Global Threat Landscape Report, “… in the first half of 2023, we see cybercrime organizations and nation-state cyber-offensive groups swiftly adopting new technologies. Notably, some of these actors operate much like traditional enterprises, complete with well-defined responsibilities, deliverables, and objectives ... allowing them to experiment with and incorporate game-changing technologies, such as new generative AI, that make their attacks more complex and harder to detect.”

The numbers are telling the same story: an increased attack surface combined with growing sophistication on the part of cybercriminals translates to an increase in threats. In fact, cyberattacks showed a 314% increase from the first half of 2022 to the first half of 2023, with some industries tallying that growth at over 1,300%.

Four simple rules from the federal government

For this year’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is advocating for some easily understood actions and steps that all US organizations should consider:

• Use strong passwords and a password manager
  
• Turn on multifactor authentication (MFA)
• Recognize and report phishing
• Update your software

Cybersecurity resources

There has been a great deal of information dispersed in an effort to help IT leaders across industries stay abreast of recent, developing, or persistent cybersecurity trends and concerns. In 2023, although many of our blog posts touched on cybersecurity in one fashion or another, these were specifically focused on the following topics:

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks: According to Zayo’s annual Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Insights Report DDoS attacks have skyrocketed 200% during the first half of 2023 compared to the full year of 2022. That report states that several factors led to the rise in DDoS attacks, including increasing digitization, political unrest, and the emergence of remote workers. In this post, we look at DDoS attacks, a form of data-driven sabotage that has only increased in frequency and intensity since its forerunner, Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, were introduced decades ago. Learn what you can do to protect your network infrastructure.

Cybersecurity skills gap: The findings in the Fortinet 2023 Cybersecurity Skills Gap Global Research Report clearly show that organizations are fighting an uphill battle against cyber threats — incurring more breaches, in need of skilled professionals, and continuing to battle to find and retain candidates and employees who meet those needs. Considering the challenges that cybersecurity teams face in today’s business environment, these skills shortages are significant. Even if you can find a qualified candidate, these folks come at a significant cost. Glassdoor reports that the average US salary for a Junior Cybersecurity Analyst is $94,022. See how managed solutions can help IT leaders reduce the burden on their IT teams, and thereby mitigate cybersecurity skills gap challenges.  

How Spectrum Enterprise can help

Today’s IT teams are faced with challenges unlike any they’ve faced before. They need to support a distributed workforce at scale by granting appropriate access to the cloud-based applications and programs employees need to do their jobs effectively — all while keeping their data secure.

Our Secure Access with Cisco Duo and Cloud Security with Cisco+ Secure Connect offerings are designed to help clients provide their employees with safe and secure access to information and applications on private networks or public clouds, while integrating seamlessly with managed network offerings. Learn more about our cybersecurity offerings and see for yourself why 83% of Fortune 500 rely on Spectrum Enterprise for technology solutions.