Spotlight on Cybersecurity Awareness: Own IT, Secure IT, Protect IT

Cybersecurity should be a concern for all businesses -- large and small. Cybersecurity also should be a concern for consumers, government agencies, and basically anyone who relies on the Internet in our increasingly connected world.

To cite two high-profile examples of mass cybercrime, some 3 billion Yahoo accounts were hacked in 2016, and 412 million Friendfinder accounts were compromised in 2017, according to cybersecurity research firm Varonis.

The average cost of a malware attack was US$2.4 million, while the cost in lost time averaged 50 days, the firm found. Even more worrisome, the average cost of global cybercrime increased by 27 percent in 2017, with ransomware costs exceeding $5 billion that year -- 15 times higher than ransomware costs just two years previously.

The problem is that far too many people still disregard the threats.

"Yes, we should definitely be thinking about cybersecurity all the time," said Elad Shapria, head of research at cybersecurity firm Panorays.

"We should be thinking about it at least as often as we use our smartphones, computers, and any devices that connect to the Internet, which is pretty much every minute of the day," he told TechNewsWorld. "But because connecting to the Internet and sharing data is so much a part of our lives, we tend to push their ramifications to the back of our minds."