The festive season is upon us and Christmas is approaching fast! Soon, many of us will be able to enjoy a few hard-earned days off as we tuck into our turkeys, pull open a cracker and, perhaps, have one glass of sherry too many as we indulge in the holiday spirit.
With Christmas also comes the turn of a new year; a chance to raise a glass to new beginnings, leave bad memories from the previous 12 months behind and look forward to a healthy, prosperous future.
However, if there’s one thing we know about the cyber world, it’s that threats and risks refuse to take a break, and what’s more, they will always continue to evolve, adapt and change. As people start to think about resolutions and fresh starts, it’s important the cybersecurity community also turns it thoughts to the future as it looks to prepare itself for what’s ahead.
So, with 2016 drawing to a close, what are the experts predicting about what we can expect to face in 2017?
Well, according to specialists at Fujitsu, poor routine IT practices will cause the most avoidable harm to businesses next year.
Most of the cybersecurity problems which affect organizations don’t happen because of ingenious new cyber-attack techniques or sneaky malicious insiders, the firm says.
"Instead, many businesses fail to do the vital housekeeping tasks which reduce their risks," argued Mark Stollery, managing consultant, enterprise & cyber security at Fujitsu. "Whether it is effective vulnerability patching, appropriate threat intelligence, an access management system which truly reflects only current users, implementation of ‘least privilege’ access, or taking action on the recommendations of penetration tests, many organizations fall short."
This unfortunately looks set to continue into 2017, he added, with too many data-rich organizations not taking reasonable steps to do the housekeeping basics, leaving themselves needlessly vulnerable to data loss, data theft or external disruption of their systems. This means the majority of headlining breaches of 2017 will be avoidable.
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