Cybercrime, By the Numbers

On Sunday, the venture-capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz invested $90 million in a company called Tanium Inc. Andreeseen Horowitz is famous for backing companies like Facebook and Pinterest.

But what does the relatively unheard-of company Tanium Inc. specialize in? As it turns out, cybersecurity.

If you’re going to run a business in this day and age, it’s important to understand the climate of cybercrime. This is especially important for companies that work with large amounts of data—especially in finance and energy—because those are the companies most often targeted by cybercriminals.

Here are some of the key things to know about the current landscape in cybercrime:

• Energy companies have a 44% chance of certainly or most likely being targeted by sophisticated cybercrime in the next twelve months.
• Finance companies follow closely behind, with a 31% chance of certainly or most likely being targeted by sophisticated cybercrime in the next twelve months.
• The top threats for companies are organized cybercrime and “hacktivists” (e.g. groups like Anonymous and Cult of the Dead Cow, whose primary goal is to make some kind of political statement).
• The top threat vectors are (unsurprisingly) e-mail and the internet.
• The two biggest cyber security challenges are the complexity of modern malware and its volume. Nearly 70% of data breaches are a result of malware, and 200,000 new malware threats are created every day.

It’s important for all businesses to be aware of the threat of cybercrime. Malware and spam are very good at making themselves look like legitimate e-mails and getting you to follow links and download programs you wouldn’t normally look at twice.

When in doubt, contact IT. And never share your personal information. While it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to avoid contact with cybercrime altogether, these basic steps are the first line of defense in keeping your business’ data safe.

If you’d like to learn more about how to maximize your security, you can connect with us through the contact page of our site, or by Facebook or Twitter.