as CEO log pointJesper is an expert in business and cybersecurity innovation.
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Cyberattacks on critical systems such as SAP, Salesforce, and Oracle can disrupt business operations.and 77% For example, the global transaction revenue that passes through the SAP system must be adequately protected by the organization.
SAP systems, Salesforce and Oracle are all critical to business continuity. Organizations use them for enterprise resource planning (ERP), human capital management (HCM), sales, marketing, supply chain management (SCM), and customer relationship management (CRM). Most likely, your critical and most valuable data resides in one of these systems.
Despite its importance, many organizations manage critical business security against all odds. In fact, 64% of all ERP deployments were compromised between October 2017 and October 2019. The problem is that business-critical security is either outside the purview of the security team or relies solely on the vendor’s own security tools for protection. Either way, it’s a risky business.On average, downtime costs $10,000 For an hour, it only takes one successful attack.
Organizations need to ensure end-to-end visibility across business-critical systems to control risk.
A real gold mine for fraudsters and cybercriminals
Due to the vast amount of digital assets stored in business-critical systems and the poor security that protects them, it is no surprise that they are attractive targets for fraudsters and cybercriminals.In fact, the average number of attack attempts per company increased 31% From 2020 to 2021.Additionally, the average cost of a data breach ranges from $4.24 million in 2021 to $4.35 million in 2022— and it looks like the rally will continue.
However, threats do not only come from the surrounding environment. Human error remains one of the most common reasons for the success of security breaches – sometimes intentional, sometimes mistaken.according to Verizon DBIR Report 2022, a staggering 82% of breaches involved human action.In addition, insider threats have also increased over 44% Over the past two years, each incident resulted in an average of $15.38 million in damages.
Unfortunately, attackers can use a range of attack vectors to exploit insecure business-critical systems, including advanced persistent threats, malware, ransomware, phishing, and denial of service. If an adversary successfully attacks an organization, the organization may lose control of its systems, and the consequences are multifaceted and dire.
Security breaches with irreversible consequences
Failures or threats in critical business systems can have a fatal impact on day-to-day operations, resulting in financial loss, lack of productivity, and damage to brands and relationships. Let’s take a closer look at the consequences:
• Intellectual property in the public domain. Cybercriminals can steal your intellectual property and sensitive data and expose or delete them. If criminals release your data to the public, you are no longer in control. If they delete it, you’re done. In both cases, you risk losing your competitive advantage and considerable market share.
• Compliance failure. Your organization is at risk of failing regulatory compliance if someone (intentionally or not) leaks, misuses, or has unauthorized access to sensitive personal data about employees, suppliers, or business partners’ payroll, health data, and personally identifiable information. Bad for your brand. Bad for your bottom line.
• Operational disruption. Attackers with unauthorized access can manipulate sensitive data such as banking information or supply chain data. The result can be that your suppliers are not paying on time, or that purchase orders are lost and cause delays throughout the production value chain. It is neither suitable for business continuity nor your relationship with suppliers.
Clearly, the impact of security breaches on critical business systems is profound and harmful to your business. To prevent this from happening, you must rethink how you protect them. The best way to address this is to map out the most important assets to protect, assess the threat level, and introduce a security level that matches it.
Enhance protection and address compliance with technology and processes
To reduce your business risk, you need a cybersecurity strategy that minimizes business risk and enables your security team to respond quickly and make informed decisions. For starters, you should give your security team access to critical business data generated in your system. Otherwise, they can’t proactively correlate data with data from your IT infrastructure, which is critical to addressing current and emerging security threats to your business.
You need to track unusual activity on user accounts to keep your organization away from most organizations that suffer financially from security breaches. Real-time monitoring of critical business infrastructure alerts you to suspicious behavior and helps you resolve compliance issues and minimize cyber threats. Finally, automated remediation of suspicious behavior can significantly reduce the risk of internal and external data breaches and outages.
visibility, visibility, visibility
Your business-critical systems are at the heart of your digital infrastructure. Your intellectual property and most sensitive data are there. This is why they are so attractive to cybercriminals and vulnerable if left unprotected. Allowing your security team to continuously monitor these systems and automatically detect and respond to threats is critical to reducing the risk of attack and ensuring your organization is fully prepared when the next cybercriminal chooses to target your critical assets.
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