In today’s business world, companies are increasingly using digital transformation to survive in a dynamic and unpredictable environment. They are integrating digital technology in all aspects of their business to maximize efficiency and profitability. 

Today, there are more than 4 billion internet users, approximately 1.8 billion websites, and more than 337 billion GB worth of internet traffic, half of which is generated through mobile phones. 

The benefits of digital transformation are undeniable: it enhances data collection, improves resource management, provides data-driven customer insights, boosts customer experience, reduces costs, and increases profits. However, it is also undeniable that despite the benefits that come with wide technology adoption, organizations and individuals are at an increasing risk of cyberattacks. 

The Reality of Cybersecurity 

1. Digital Transformation Can Lead to An Increase in Cybersecurity Threats 

One danger is that many organizations adopting technologies like cloud services do not always do so in a coherent manner. With providers like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, it’s incredibly easy to acquire cloud servers in seconds, all by yourself. Ninety percent of companies are now using some type of cloud service, with 77 percent of enterprises running at least one application or a part of it in the cloud. The average organization employs more than 1000 different cloud services. At the same time, more than half of organizations store confidential data using cloud technology.

While cloud resources are easy to utilize, their unplanned acquisition has become a nightmare for security experts, who lack visibility in the process. One reason is that cloud services contain systems and information that can expose a business to attacks in case of misconfigurations—besides, lack of visibility results in undetected vulnerabilities that hackers exploit to steal crucial data. 

1. Worsening Lack of Availability of Cybersecurity Experts

In addition to the expanding attack surface, the cybersecurity skills gap is widening. Current data reveal that the skills shortage issue impacts 70 percent of organizations. With a small security team, businesses must grapple with long-standing open jobs, increased training or junior staff, and an inability to utilize security technologies to their full potential. The estimate for the additional trained staff required in order to close the skills gap is approximately 4.07 million professionals worldwide. 

There is an acute shortage of security professionals, such as application security specialists, cloud security specialists, and security analysts. With increased migration to the cloud, massive demand for software products, and continuous shift to remote work, the worsening skill shortage is alarming. 

1. Businesses Increase Cybersecurity Budgets 

Enterprises’ spending on cybersecurity continues to grow in contrast to the pandemic-driven economic downturn impacting global IT budgets. In 2020, many businesses entered situations where they needed to respond, including making wise decisions on their resources to remain afloat. While they revised budgets, cybersecurity still remained a top priority. 

No doubt, the coronavirus crisis created new opportunities for cybercriminals. Experts predicted that 70 percent of organizations would increase cybersecurity spending following the COVID-19 pandemic. By the same token, around 55 percent of major organizations will invest more in automation solutions, smart analytics, and artificial intelligence that improve defense mechanisms. Global spending on cybersecurity will reach 133.7 billion US dollars in 2022, and the worldwide cybersecurity market size will most likely grow to 248.26 billion US dollars by 2023. 

1. The Rapidly Increasing Threat of Cyberattacks 

Today’s COVID-19 pandemic has presented new components to the cybersecurity equation, resulting in a cyber pandemic. The increased shift to remote work exposed weaknesses in employee awareness and company networks. Cybercriminals capitalized on this by attacking companies through phishing and other means.  

Most cyberattacks include malware attacks, denial of service (DoS), distributed denial of service (DDoS), man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks, phishing, password attacks, and SQL injection. 

A study confirmed the near-constant rate of hacker attacks on computers, revealing that a data breach event occurs every 39 seconds on average. Security experts predict cybercrime-related damage to hit 6 trillion US dollars annually by 2021. 

1. The Growing Costs of Cyberattacks

Currently, the cost of data breaches and security incidents is increasing. U.S. organizations face an average of 8.19 million US dollars per breach, up 5.3 percent in 2019. The average spending on an insider threat incident, including monitoring, escalation, incident response, containment, investigation, and remediation, also increased from 513,000 to 756,760 U.S. dollars. 

Apart from direct incident response costs, companies suffer regulation violation costs. The cybersecurity field is now driven by a complex regulatory landscape that varies from state-to-state and country-to-country. Marriott and British Airways spent approximately 100 million US dollars each after falling foul of GDPR.  

In addition to noncompliance costs, 40 percent of a data breach’s average cost stems from lost business, including high customer turnover, lost revenue due to system downtime, and the new cost of acquiring business after reputational damage. 

Strengthening Cybersecurity with a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP)

As the drive towards digital transformation gains traction, there has never been a more vital time for organizations to revise their cybersecurity strategies. In the thick of it, businesses can come alongside managed security service providers who have become an invaluable resource for companies that want to enhance their cybersecurity posture but lack the resources to create an effective, efficient cybersecurity team internally. 

An MSSP delivers extensive cybersecurity knowledge and experience in network, cloud, and application security issues that most businesses lack. Without a doubt, an MSSP team possesses knowledge that is more current and advanced than what an in-house team can provide. 

On top of that, MSSPs deploy security tools that in-house security teams are not familiar with. In effect, the service providers are better positioned to improve an organization’s ability to detect and respond to prevalent and emerging cybersecurity threats. 

Using MSSP services means that an organization does not have to hire in-demand security human resources, buy, deploy, and manage security tools or keep up with dynamic security changes and shifts in the threat landscape. 

Taking the First Steps with GlobalCSA 

Businesses can contract GlobalCSA, leaving their in-house IT teams to focus on value-driven projects. GlobalCSA is completely aware of the importance of cybersecurity in an economy and understands different security concerns that enterprises and users face. In effect, the company stands ready to use its advanced cybersecurity services to help companies overcome complex and frequent cybersecurity threats. 

Partnering with GlobalCSA empowers a business to design and incorporate reliable security solutions into their infrastructure to support their enterprise business strategy. The MSSP provides visibility, automation, and innovative capabilities to protect and help businesses grow securely.