For the past 18 years, October has been globally recognised as Cyber Security Awareness Month (CSAM), which emphasises the importance of cybersecurity and encourages individuals and companies to be informed of the latest ways to stay safe online. The initiative was created by the US Department of Homeland Security and the National Cyber Security Alliance in 2004 to raise the importance of digital security for people and businesses alike.
The theme for 2021 is “Do your part. #BeCyberSmart”. According to the US Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), in this ‘always-on’ age, it is critical that both individuals and companies take accountability for educating themselves on proactive steps they must take to enhance cybersecurity.
With the COVID pandemic changing the world of work virtually overnight, malware and ransomware cyber-attacks have reached unprecedented heights over the past 18 months. Regardless of how well a business attempts to protect its infrastructure with the latest backup, anti-virus, and network security technology, the human factor remains the biggest risk to effective cybersecurity.
Even with regular security training interventions, an alarming number of people still believe that their online practices do not pose a security threat to themselves or their organisation, yet social engineering remains the number one root cause of ransomware and other malware attacks to gain initial access.
Aside from denial due to ignorance of how simple it is to launch a cyber-attack, one of the main reasons for resistance from individuals to change their online behaviour is related to perceived privacy concerns. Paradoxically, with a record number of global workers and learners confined to their homes over the past 18 months, that very concern regarding privacy should be prompting people to ensure that their home networks, internet-connected devices and data are adequately secured.
In terms of business threats, 2021 has been the year for ransomware, with several high-profile attacks across the globe. Ransomware has become one of the most prevalent attack methods with bad actors constantly modifying their tools to infiltrate a network. They are able to render all forms of traditional backup useless, as well as deleting or corrupting backed up data.
Enter software-defined networks (SDN), which unlike their outdated counterparts (the traditional VPN), enable the construction of scalable, redundant and highly secure network connections between on-premises, remote, edge and/or cloud environments.
That is why Echo has built our software-defined network solution using Fortinet’s FortiGate technology. We have not added security appliances to our network. We have built our SuperWAN on security infrastructure.
FortiGate firewalls are purpose-built with security processers to enable the industry’s best threat protection and performance for SSL-encrypted traffic. By providing granular visibility of applications, users, and IOT devices, these appliances are designed to identify issues quickly and intuitively.