The outlook on cybersecurity is bleak. Although it isn’t necessarily obvious from looking at the amount of popular coverage it gets, criminals are overwhelmingly winning the cybersecurity war. This is due to a number of complex factors, but primarily it is because individual businesses don’t have an effective means of defending themselves. Up-to-date and secure data storage is so expensive that most companies don’t have the means to hide it properly from criminals. However, nearly every business and governmental agencies have information that needs to be protect.
A recent estimate found that 25 percent of global data was lost due to cyberattacks in 2014. This is an incredibly high figure. If one-quarter of the money in the world was stolen, that would be $15 trillion dollars, or roughly the annual GDP of the United States. Information sells for a high price, and it can be used by criminals to wreak havoc on customers, businesses and government agencies. It is of paramount importance, then, for organizations to do what they can to keep their information secure. Using cloud computing for government agencies is an effective way to do this, as it can consolidate information on much more secure networks than other types of data storage.
Information needs to be protected
The U.S.’s cybersecurity measures are lacking, according to Ashton Carter, nominee for defense secretary. This is an issue because, while many organizations slack on developing new network security techniques, no cybercriminal group stops developing new means of attack. Server defenses are always on the responsive – as businesses respond to emerging threats, hackers can make new advances by testing out new exploits that haven’t been protected against. New types of intrusion detection are necessary for keeping criminals out of networks, and investing in methods of preventing intrusions becomes increasingly expensive.
One method out of this is to invest in a cloud for local government agencies. Many federal groups are experimenting with pooled clouds, which allow them to store a bunch of information for different groups on one shared server that can be locked up fairly tightly. By doing this, organizations make it easier for their information to be kept safe without having to employ their own security gurus. Doing this can help federal agencies secure their information at minimal cost to the workers in those places, which is very helpful when dealing with the rapid pace of modern technology.