Bridgeworks features in this article from Computing Security about ways to mitigate cyber risk with WAN Acceleration. Page 28-29.
Jan 24, 2025
The third quarter of 2024 has seen a 75% increase in cyber-attacks compared to the same period in 2023. The 2024 Cyber Security Report, published by Check Point, satates that there were 1,876 attacks per organisation. This also equates to a 15% rise from the previous quarter. The report suggests all this represents an unprecedented surge in cyber-attacks worldwide.
Imagine if one of these attacks – which could be a ransomware attack – prevented access to critical operational data. What could you do if there was no failover in place and no business or service continuity? Not a lot. Similarly, a data breach could cause a calamity – leaving an organisation facing huge data protection fines, litigation suits, lost revenue, a damaged reputation and potentially lost customers.
A Google AI Overview adds: “In 2024, cybercrime is expected to cost the world economy $7.46 trillion, and the average cost of a data breach is $4.88 million. This is a significant increase from previous years, and experts predict that global cybercrime damage costs will grow by 15% annually over the next few years.” It also states that: “The average cost of a single ransomware attack is $1.85 million,” and that 88% of cyber-security breaches are caused by human error.
Risk mitigation is important to individuals, organisations of all sizes and to the global economy. In this context, risk mitigation is about preventing attacks while having a Plan B, in case a cyber-attack is successful. Based on this, IBM is right to describe risk mitigation as a culmination of techniques and strategies.
For example, there is the need to educate staff and partners to ensure that phishing attacks don’t lead to a data breach, or to a ransomware attack. Then there is the need to back up data and be able to rapidly restore it to prevent downtime. That can be achieved with WAN Acceleration. It uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data parallelisation to mitigate the effects of latency and packet loss over a Wide Area Network (WAN).
It’s vital to ensure that datacentres and disaster recovery sites aren’t placed in the same circles of disruption, so that when a natural disaster occurs, one or more of them can continue to operate and maintain services. WAN Acceleration safeguards data and makes sure it’s in the right place at the right time for when a disaster occurs. It allows organisations to mitigate the impact of cyberattacks, natural disasters, financial uncertainty, legal liabilities, strategic management errors and accidents to protect their organisation and its operations
Click here to read the article on Computing Security. Page 28-29.
