Tennis and cybersecurity: avoiding unforced errors
The U.S. Open Tennis Championships just wrapped in Queens, New York, a few subway stops away from Coro’s NYC headquarters. What does a nearly 150-year-old sport have to do with cybersecurity for mid-market companies? While seemingly polar opposites, the two have much more in common than one might think.
Besides the obvious clichés of “keeping your eye on the ball,” there are also significant parallels to cybersecurity. From attack surfaces, vulnerability management, and the human factors that so often plague businesses with lean IT teams.
Tennis is a game of adaptation. You must understand playing conditions, your opponents, and even the crowd. They also need to expect the unexpected and be able to act on their feet. They need to be constantly learning from their opponent’s game and mirror their posture.
Expect the unexpected
The same rings true in the game of cybersecurity.
Cybercriminals are constantly refining and updating their attack methods, not to mention finding increasingly unique ways to outsmart your defenses. In cyber attacks, small businesses suffer the most collateral damage.
Last year alone, the professional services sector saw 7,463 reported security incidents — the highest of any industry. That’s why it’s so important to take a close look at all your potential areas of vulnerability and your response plan in the event of a breach.
“As users now work from home the office, on their own devices, on corporate devices, or any combination of the above, organizations are faced with a massive increase in attack surface, yet shrinking budgets and teams,” said Guy Moskowitz, Coro’s CEO and Co-Founder. “The traditional separation of home and work environments is no longer relevant and trying to use traditional security measures such as firewalls and VPNs makes no operational or financial sense.”
Today’s attack surface (number of vulnerability points) is extensive. Cloud app risks can be exploited by compromising users, devices, and SaaS applications. This reality is especially troublesome for small businesses.
A data breach at these organizations costs anywhere from $36,000 to $86,000 per incident. The costs of mitigation, remediation, and business continuity escalating. It’s no wonder that according to the National Cyber Security Alliance, as many as 60 percent of small and medium-sized businesses go out of business in the six months following a cyber-attack.
To err is human
In tennis, they call a mistake an unforced error. And human error will forever be the number one weakness in your security posture.
“People often represent the weakest link in the security chain,” laments cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier. “[People] are chronically responsible for the failure of security systems.”
While it’s true the average business suffers a cyber-attack every 12 seconds, your number one threat comes from inside the house. Nothing is as dangerous as employees who don’t follow security best practices.
Coro only surfaces the issues that require human expertise. This means Coro acts like a productivity solution for security — it’s easy to install and operate and enables IT to quickly configure what is and isn’t critical to your business security.
