In 2010, the Essex County prosecutor’s office opened its cybercrimes unit to combat the rising levels of crimes committed over the Internet. The task force investigates cyber crimes against New Jersey businesses, which can include hacking by outside bad actors and embezzlement by trusted inside bad actors. By understanding how cyber assessments in Essex County, NJ can reduce the chance of experiencing a cybercrime, you can substantially reduce the possibility of your enterprise becoming a cybercrime victim.
Why Assess For Cyber Threats?
Cybercrime is already a big business, and that business is booming. In 2017, the U.S. Attorney’s New Jersey office prosecuted New Jersey cases involving security fraud scams, payment card thefts and hacks into bank accounts held by several high-profile NJ residents. That year, the FBI’s Internet Crime Unit fielded almost 300,000 cybercrime complaints which caused over $1.4B in losses to both individual consumers and all sizes of corporations.
According to the New Jersey Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Cell (NJCCIC), ransomware is the most perpetrated crime against New Jersey-based companies, and that unit has documented 175 variations of the ransomware software since 2015. While corporations of any size can be targets, the NJCCIC reports enterprise-level victims across all industries including investment firms, law firms, healthcare facilities, and even police and law enforcement agencies. In the year of June 2016 through June 2017, The NJCCIC unit responded to 77 ransomware crime victims (6.4 crimes per month) which cost those victims a total of over $373,000.
While there’s no knowing whether those corporate victims had assessed their enterprise for vulnerabilities, the statistics show that those vulnerabilities definitely existed and were exploited by nefarious people. Consequently, enterprise security professionals encourage every corporation to undergo a thorough cyber assessment in Essex County, NJ to avoid becoming yet another victim of cybercrime.
What’s Entailed in a Cyber Assessment in Essex County, NJ?
Virtually every organizational function can be hacked, so almost all corporate functions are vulnerable to attack. A cyber assessment assesses entire corporate infrastructures to identify where vulnerabilities exist. That assessment then informs cybersecurity companies about where the biggest risks lie within the organizational structure so they can find appropriate responses to those challenges. The intent is to provide every company with the programming needed to detect, prevent and defend against a cyber attack in any aspect of the organization’s digital infrastructure. Cyber assessments in Essex County, NJ would prioritize those cybercrimes already identified (ransomware as an example) as well as threats that haven’t been as widely reported (such as insider crimes).
To ensure that your cyber assessment is as thorough as possible, many cybersecurity professionals recommend looking for at least these four elements within every assessment:
1. A map of all relevant corporate assets
Cyber risk assessments should cover every corporate function, process and application. For many companies, identifying each specific technical element is almost impossible, so instead, they break their organization into an operational framework that clarifies where, within the company, particular functions and activities occur. With this information, the security profession can methodically address the vulnerabilities that reside in each operational sector.
2. Clarification of values
In the case of cybersecurity, values are relative. If you have data that is fundamental to your company’s success, then its value is inestimable while information related to product coloring may not be so critical. The question to ask is how long you could stay in business if a hacker steals your proprietary corporate information. How would such a theft affect your revenues? Market share? Future profitability?
The more important corporate assets are to fundamental processes and long-term success, the more they need the highest level of sophisticated digital protections. The cyber assessment should reveal how you and your company value its resources.
3. Cost/benefit analysis of prevention versus defense
If your budget is a concern, your assessment should also help you see where investments should be made versus where they might only be a best practice. The assessment should identify for you those instances where the loss of function would result in catastrophic damage to your enterprise. It should also tell you where it might be less costly to risk an invasion than to pay to prevent it. The resulting information allows you to make the appropriate investments in cybersecurity programming so that your foundational organization can both defend against and recover from any type of cyber invasion.
4. Where monitoring is optimal
Because the number and type of security threats are constantly evolving, so must your cybersecurity efforts evolve to address them. At the same time, your enterprise is growing and changing to meet industry challenges. New users, new customers or suppliers, and new systems producing new products all introduce new gaps in both security features and practices, all of which are added vulnerabilities to the security systems you currently have in place. Consequently, the assessment should also identify how your organization can consistently monitor both internal and external weaknesses for both known and emerging threats.
Implementing a Cybersecurity Plan
Once your managed security company tells you what to look for in cyber assessment in Essex County NJ, you’ll have a much better idea about the threats posed to your enterprise and how you can manage them. With this information in hand, you are better able to make intelligent decisions about the type of security measures you should take, and the value and nature of the risks you’re willing to accept.
Every company in Essex County, NJ is vulnerable to a security breach. With the right cybersecurity tools, your company can detect them early, recover quickly in the event of an attack, or prevent the attack altogether.
