Human beings are as strong as the weakest links – This statement completely relates to different scenarios in an organization. In a triangle of ‘People, Process, and Technology, the one who completely makes use of this pyramid is a human being. It has been observed that in the data protection process, human beings are most treacherous, even though the weakest link. This major cloud computing security challenge leads to sudden data exposure or misplacement. Now a question strikes in mind i.e., What makes an individual so fragile, particularly in a business concerning data protection and safety? Also, why do data protection and safety demand people’s involvement?
A study organized by one of the well-known companies said that 78 percent think that “only the endpoint data protection is majorly required to be safe from data breaches or threats; due to which they neglect the security of data from employees side.” An average of 9.3 insider attacks is encountered every month. Also, the study showed that 90% of enterprises faced at least one internal attack per month. Organizations of the United States faced $40 million of data loss in the year 2003 because of the unauthorized use of PCs by employees.
Human Mistake or Malicious Intention?
The initial step towards Cyber security in determining the human source is an eagerness to address and acknowledge the issue. Awareness regarding the cloud threat landscape is a big gap, which has to be filled at any cost. To understand the disaster caused due to the carelessness of human beings, read out the following examples:
“The current Bangalore OTP theft incident was one of the classic examples where employees acted like the weakest link. Intruders convinced users by saying that ‘they are calling from their banks and are providing free upgrades on cards.’ In this process, hackers were successfully able to gather all the card details of targeted users and OTP as well. It had also been reported that the intruders sent some victims a malicious link via SMS and convinced them to open it. This particular activity permitted hackers to directly get OTP without any victim’s involvement. Lacs of money was lost because of this scam.”
Above-illustrated is just one of the examples in which humans are completely involved in the data breach incident occurrence. This points out a fact that users need to update their knowledge with the recent threat landscape and make ready to fight against the threat. They should be educated with different measures that a hacker attempts to perform an attack and not get convinced at any cost with hackers’ sweet words. The same advice belongs to large, medium, and small companies.
There are lucky chances of enterprises if some of the employees’ mistakes do not cause them big loss. But keep one thing in mind that intended problems cost even more than the mere monetary value. Independent from the capacity of firewalls, cryptography, data encryption, anti-virus software, and intrusion detection systems, in the end, it is human who is in proper control.
The other kind of attacks that are performed by human beings is through social engineering to aim at several verticals. The term ‘social engineering is an act to exploit human behavior to complete malicious intent. In the year 2016, there were around 60% of enterprises had to face hackers in social engineering threats. Most of the time telecom, consumer internet, healthcare, BFSI, e-commerce industries, and online services are considered vulnerable. These types of industries are the major target in the eyes of attackers to capitalize on the employee’s negligence.
The inadequate amount of resources for the data protection process leads to the occurrence of internal threats. In the 14th edition of Global Risks Report 2019, Cyber threats and data theft or fraud were placed in the top 5 list of the World Economic Forum.
Mitigating Human Vulnerabilities with Data Protection Process
The trust of employees is for sure one of the major aspects. Of course, an employee with a positive and motivated attitude is the best asset for a company. Educating employees and giving them regular training regarding VAPT (vulnerability assessment and penetration testing), people risk assessment, cost-benefit analysis, etc., is the work that companies have to do to remove the weakest link in the data protection process. Organizations should encourage their employees by giving them incentives or rewards, work safely online.
Cyber security attacks are in consistent flux, growing to create that final breach. Leadership must give a response to human vulnerabilities and be in a similar evolving state. Hurdles have to be fixed for ensuring business integrity. Companies, which don’t provide attention towards proactive data protection process awareness or risk assessments, are damned to spend an unexpectedly large amount. This is done to mitigate public relations nightmare from disastrous data loss incidents.
Time to Wrap Up
The only thing to overcome the weakest link in the data protection process is to spread awareness, as much as possible. No guarantee of 100 percent security can be there in Cyber security but, also there is nothing we couldn’t do to prevent cloud computing threats. Its time to aware and enhance personal diligence to security.