That’s more than 30% of people on the planet with internet access. In one month! All of that during April 2019, bringing the annual total to 5.64 billion. I wonder what will happen in May.
An article on IT Governance Blog details all of the cyber-attacks, ransomware, data breaches and financial information that was compromised during the most recent month. There’s over 70 in the list including 25 healthcare providers and 19 schools and government agencies. I doubt the list is complete.
The real challenge with cyber-attacks in general and phishing attacks in particular isn’t technology, it’s denial. The technology to prevent most of these attacks already exists, it’s easy to deploy and extremely affordable. And yet, dozens of organizations get breached every month.
Just one example from the list highlights the irony of all this. According to an article on WSB-TV Atlanta, Georgia Tech says data breach exposed 1.3 million people. Officials said the breach impacts 1.3 million people, including “some current and former faculty, students, staff and student applicants.”
The irony here is that Georgia Tech is ranked as the fourth best engineering school in the US. You’d think with all those smart engineers around they’d figure out how NOT to get hacked.
Why do organizations have to get hacked before they realize it CAN happen to them? That’s the one problem technology has yet solve: organizational denial. The inability to think it can happen to us.
Maybe the government should pass a law making advanced phishing prevention technology mandatory for public institution like Georgia Tech that receive millions in government aid. If I were a tax payer in Georgia, I’d sure want that.