Cyber-attacks increasingly emerging from sophisticated groups and governments
Cybercrimes are on the increase and the risk is high compelling companies to be more serious about cyber security. Steve Walker, Chief Information Officer, Asia Pacific, Global Warehouse Management COE at DHL Supply Chain, quoting Russian Multinational Cyber Security and Anti-Virus provider, Kaspersky statistics, said that 38 per cent of the 4,000 companies in 25 countries were under cyber-attack and 25 per cent data has been removed from these companies .
He was addressing the CEOs’ Forum organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (CA Sri Lanka) at its Colombo auditorium, this week. It is worthwhile investing on cyber security to protect the systems, as there is growing cyber-attacks, he said and indicated that more businesses are becoming vulnerable. He said that for them security is number one priority, because their reputation as an organisation would be damaged significantly, if they did not make security an important priority. He said at DHL Supply Chain there was a protocol in place where if something happens, the company will not communicate via email or through any channel within the company’s system.
The belief that cyber-attacks have been perpetrated by children is wrong because today these attacks are carried out by highly organised and sophisticated businesses and by such attacks they look for large amount of money, Mr. Walker said adding that even some governments are doing it for political or other reasons.
He urged the top management of institutions to set up a ‘Security Operations Centre (SOC) which could monitor 24 hours a day and utilise tools to see whether there is any unusual activity happening which could prevent being hacked.
He stressed that the staff must be educated on how to protect their organisations as the two major causes of malware going into the system was through memory sticks and clicking on attachments that are received via email. Another precautionary measure would be to work with the customers and suppliers of IT and also to place someone who is responsible for data security, he pointed out.
As all large organisations may not have experts in all the data and cyber security, employing outsiders to look at their systems is alright, he said.
In his opening remarks, Lasantha Wickremasinghe, President, CA Sri Lanka said that cyber threats top the list of challenges that organisations face in the fast developing technologically advanced world where there is increasing risks of fraud and security threats and therefore it is advisable to invest in cyber security to make the systems secure.
In this backdrop, he said the business world is compelled to embrace changes and trends and be educated on the risk and mitigate it.