5 industries that are most vulnerable to cyber-Attacks

Banking and Finance

First and foremost, it’s pretty self-explanatory as to why hackers see banking and finance businesses as gold mines. Via cyber-attacks, criminals can gain access to an array of valuable information such as client identities, bank account numbers, home addresses and private financial information. In fact, banks experience 85 attempted breaches on average every year, with 36% of these being successful in retrieving sensitive information[1].

With this in mind, any customers that even dabble in this kind of industry should have cyber security measures on lockdown.

Health Care

Similar to banking, health care industries also contain a lot of the public’s personal, private information. While cyber criminals can’t extract financial details for profit as much as they can with banking, they can hold the public’s health records – which include names, addresses and physical conditions – as ransom for a large sum of money (usually in bitcoin) in return.

With the NHS falling prey to WannaCry, one of the biggest cyber-attacks in 2017[2], cyber criminals will only continue to get smarter – that’s why you need to ensure that your customers are also getting smarter with their email and web security.

Education

With a focus on higher education in particular, Universities hold highly sensitive documents such as exam results and dissertations – making the exclusivity of these documents an appealing target for cyber criminals.

According to VMWare[3], at least 30% of universities are attacked every hour, with 87% experience experiencing at least one attack. Not only could this sort of attack compromise all of the students, but also the reputation of the University itself. Because of this, ensuring they have high security measures in place is imperative.

Energy Industry

With energy being an essential in our day to day lives, energy networks are extremely vulnerable to cyber criminals. This is because hackers can cause a widespread power outage, and have the ability to access nuclear facilities, power grids and power generation facilities all around the world, impacting millions of citizens. Simply deploying a security solution can help prevent this and any other potential damage a cyber-attack may cause.

Government Agencies

A government agency holds an array of the public’s personal information. From license records, healthcare information, tax records and more, for this reason alone, government bodies are an obvious victim. If a government’s information system is compromised, cyber criminals are able to access these important documents in which many people and organisations outside of the government can benefit from, including crime and militant groups etc.

Because of this, governments should take extra precaution to ensure they have an effective security solution in place.

As we can see by the above scenarios, there are a variety of different ways that industries can be affected by cyber criminals. Even if your customers don’t fall under any of these industries, it doesn’t mean that their businesses are safe. Make sure your customers trust that you can provide them with an effective security solution such as Symantec.cloud, Email Protect and Web Security.

To find out more on Symantec, speak to your account manager on 0333 332 0888.

[1]Accenture, High Performance Security Report, 2016, https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-building-confidence-cyber-security-conundrum-banking

[2] The Telegraph, NHS Cyber-attack: Everything you need to know about ‘biggest ransomware’ offensive in history, 2017 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/13/nhs-cyber-attack-everything-need-know-biggest-ransomware-offensive/

[3] VM Ware, University Challenge: Cyber Attacks in Higher Education, https://www.nextgensecurityforeducation.com/wp-content/uploads/VMWare-UK-University-Challenge-Cyber-Security.pdf