TECHNOLOGY
A dozen tips to secure your data
“ Your computer is now stoned ”
“ There are two types of companies : those that have been hacked , and those who don ’ t yet know they have been …”
John Chambers , former Cisco CEO
In 1987 , as a systems programmer working with 360K floppy diskettes in a computer lab in Westboro , MA , I froze when this ominous message popped up on my green-screen monitor . This much-feared statement had spelt doom , and sent our data center staff scurrying in paroxysms of fear .
The Stoned virus , was the first of a kind of malicious software , simply known as malware . Kaspersky , an antivirus company , stated that 360,000 malware variants were created every day last year , hijacking millions of computers , destroying terabytes of data , and holding small businesses and large corporations hostage in their grip .
Spurred by the internet boom and a closely-interconnected world where data is king , information technology enablement has become the key to success . Corporations are rife with risk from hackers who are after priceless consumer information for financial gain , and in some egregious cases , for espionage purposes .
Every 39 seconds
Krish V . Krishnan , Founder & CEO of Magnifact , a Chicago-based insurtech company that created AgentVizion suite — a highly-secure production measurement platform . Krish has over 35 years of IT experience and is an alum of the Harvard Business School . Email : kvkrishnan @ magnifact . com
Years after the birth of the relatively-harmless Stoned virus , cybercrime has grown into dangerously enormous proportions . A Clark School study at the University of Maryland stated that a cybersecurity attack happens at an alarming rate of one every 39 seconds . Computers , storage devices , the cloud , e-mail , smartphones and even Internet of Things ( IOT ) devices have all become vehicles of malicious digital destruction .
Cybersecurity Ventures research predicts cybercrime to cost the global economy an astronomical $ 6 trillion in 2021 . According to HIPAA Journal , 9.7 million healthcare records were compromised in September 2020 alone . The insurance industry is a perfect target , given the volume of personally identifiable information of policyholders an insurance company or an agency may be holding in its records . All this is not including other sensitive information like patient and physician billing information , credit card and bank account data from where premiums are withdrawn or commissions paid out to agents . The list is endless .
Just like the recent SolarWinds Orion breach that hit the headlines in December last year , and another infamous 2015 incident at a large health insurance company where millions of policyholder records were compromised , all this is harsh reality . Cybercrime has inflicted trillions of dollars of damages and tarnished reputations . This trend has also caused the emergence of IT security teams within corporations and various levels of insurance protections that companies are needing to secure against such situations .
30 Perspectives Q2 2021