Cyber Defense eMagazine March Edition for 2022
The view from the Publisher’s desk is very encouraging, based on celebrating 10 years of growth and success at Cyber Defense Magazine! When our tiny team began our journey at Cyber Defense Media Group (CDMG) together in January 2012, we were happy to help smaller, lesser-known innovators of infosec, get their message out there and Rise Above the noise. Now, after 10 years, we’re even helping multi-billion-dollar companies and governments around the globe with our offices in DC, London, FL, NY and other locations in play, as we continue to scale, thanks to you – our readers, listeners, viewers and media partners. Beyond the magazine, in response to the demands of our markets, the scope of CDMG’s activities has grown into many media endeavors. They now include Cyber Defense Awards; Cyber Defense Conferences; Cyber Defense Professionals (job postings site being revamped); Cyber Defense TV, Radio, and Webinars; and Cyber Defense Ventures (partnering with investors). Please check them out and see how much more CDMG has to offer! Very respectfully and with much appreciation, Gary Miliefsky, Publisher
The view from the Publisher’s desk is very encouraging, based on celebrating 10 years of growth and success at Cyber Defense Magazine! When our tiny team began our journey at Cyber Defense Media Group (CDMG) together in January 2012, we were happy to help smaller, lesser-known innovators of infosec, get their message out there and Rise Above the noise. Now, after 10 years, we’re even helping multi-billion-dollar companies and governments around the globe with our offices in DC, London, FL, NY and other locations in play, as we continue to scale, thanks to you – our readers, listeners, viewers and media partners. Beyond the magazine, in response to the demands of our markets, the scope of CDMG’s activities has grown into many media endeavors. They now include Cyber Defense Awards; Cyber Defense Conferences; Cyber Defense Professionals (job postings site being revamped); Cyber Defense TV, Radio, and Webinars; and Cyber Defense Ventures (partnering with investors).
Please check them out and see how much more CDMG has to offer!
Very respectfully and with much appreciation,
Gary Miliefsky, Publisher
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The <strong>Cyber</strong> Security Market Has Failed Medium-Sized Businesses<br />
The cyber security market has bifurcated into large, enterprise solutions and niche point solutions. Midmarket<br />
companies are stuck in an inhospitable middle, where they don’t have the budget and resources<br />
to purchase large enterprise solutions, but also have too much complexity and attack surface <strong>for</strong> point<br />
solutions to be effective in providing security.<br />
The high cost of implementing and operating security solutions severely impedes their adoption by midmarket<br />
companies. Companies with 1,500 and fewer employees often have limited cyber security<br />
budgets and very few dedicated security professionals – if they have any specialists at all. Hundreds of<br />
employees and thousands of endpoints create an attack surface that stretches IT teams to their limits.<br />
Mid-market companies are there<strong>for</strong>e <strong>for</strong>ced to make bets on the most probable attack vectors to defend<br />
against, leaving the rest of the attack surface exposed.<br />
The Pandemic-Driven Shift Toward Remote Work Caught IT Departments Flat Footed<br />
Nobody was ready <strong>for</strong> large-scale remote work in 2020. Teams were not culturally prepared to conduct<br />
business online, office software wasn’t designed <strong>for</strong> remote work as its primary use case, and IT<br />
departments had mostly focused on on-site and VPN-style security. The shift to predominantly remote<br />
work in 2020 and 2021 disrupted every aspect of business and created huge opportunities <strong>for</strong> attackers<br />
seeking to exploit the relative naivete of the new cloud working environment.<br />
In Coro’s recent report analyzing mid-market cyber security, we found that while 50% of medium-sized<br />
companies had email malware protection in place in 2021, 88% of them had misconfigured their<br />
protection settings. Meanwhile, only 16% of mid-sized companies had email phishing protection in place,<br />
and 71% of them had misconfigured settings. Other attack vectors fared similarly or worse. This means<br />
many of the technologies deployed by IT teams, and especially the new ones deployed since the<br />
beginning of the pandemic to enable remote work, offer little actual protection against emerging classes<br />
of cyber threats.<br />
<strong>Cyber</strong> Criminals Are Turning Downstream <strong>for</strong> Easier Pickings<br />
A big score against a large enterprise is exciting <strong>for</strong> a cyber criminal, but so is the prospect of several<br />
smaller, easier scores. We observed this in practice in 2021 as attacks on medium-sized companies<br />
increased both in volume and in sophistication.<br />
Specifically, we saw that attacks on mid-market companies increased by 150% in the past two years.<br />
Moreover, these attacks are not just generic (AKA naive) attacks, but are increasingly tailored attacks <strong>for</strong><br />
<strong>Cyber</strong> <strong>Defense</strong> <strong>eMagazine</strong> – <strong>March</strong> <strong>2022</strong> <strong>Edition</strong> 92<br />
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