The pandemic has further accelerated corporate digitization processes, and more and more business areas are being transformed. While digital progress makes life easier, more efficient and more resource-saving, it has become a gateway for hackers.
Digital process innovations are on the advance, more and more companies are recognizing the opportunities. But digitization also harbors risks – and greater than the decision-makers would like. The number of cyber attacks is constantly increasing as the transformation processes are driven forward continuously. The attacks are more professional, more targeted and any company can be targeted by the perpetrators. A dilemma. While on the one hand it is important to use the opportunities of digitization, on the other hand it is important to avoid the risk of a hacker attack.
Strong dependencies, fragile system
Every company, large or small, has to face digitization. It does not matter whether you approach this challenge proactively or whether you are forced to digitize it due to your business environment or under pressure from customers. Small and medium-sized companies in particular are faced with the task of actively moving forward with digitization. Especially in light of the fact that data-driven business models are increasingly complementing traditional models, and in some areas they are even completely replacing them.
The majority of companies today operate within globalized, digitized, opaque and complex supply chains. Their structure would be ineffective and very costly without the necessary IT support. Thanks to cloud computing, application integration and algorithms, the relevant systems of the companies involved interlock in a standardized and automated manner. They create strong dependencies with one another. If the supply chain is disrupted, the cascade effect is inevitable and the full effects are often unpredictable. So much for the starting point.
Good advice is expensive
Functioning IT systems, the use and protection of your own data, which are often in the context of customers, products and services, are the basis of regulated and contract-compliant business operations. Deliberately induced disruptions that are brought about from outside by cyber attacks are therefore not only cost-intensive, but also threaten the survival of many companies. If business operations are disrupted to such an extent that the entire company is no longer able to work, good advice – in the truest sense of the word – is expensive.
As a result of the cyber attack, data leaked, stolen and then encrypted in such a way that usually no professional can restore it. This gives rise to a whole series of questions: What is to be done now? Who can help? What specific help do I need? How can work continue? Why me? The answer to the latter is usually very simple: Because there is something to be gained and the likelihood of being caught as a perpetrator is almost impossible. The internet is too big and too distributed to find the perpetrators – with a few exceptions.
Only a matter of time
There are many conceivable scenarios for hacker attacks. Cybercrime is basically designed to extort money from companies. In other words: protection money for data. Cyber espionage aims to steal information and spy on companies in order to gain a competitive advantage. There is also cyber sabotage, which manipulates and destroys the systems and processes of critical infrastructures. By disrupting IT systems and stealing, publishing and encrypting data, cyber criminals have found an extremely lucrative business area to pursue their goals under the radar of detection and under the guise of “difficult traceability”.
Protective measures for companies can only be implemented through reliable and comprehensive cybersecurity. Therefore, the golden rule applies to all companies that have not yet been met: IT security is expensive, but worth it. On the one hand, preventive measures make the likelihood of a cyber attack more difficult; on the other hand, companies are better able to sail through the crisis as a result of an attack. Companies should therefore regard the costs as expenditures for the quality management of their company and use them in a targeted manner. Just because nothing has happened to date doesn’t mean companies are safe. Recent experience shows: the attack will come.
1. Companies in the fight against cybercrime
2. 168 hours reaction time
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