According to the IBM Security Data Breach Report of 2022, India's average data breach cost is at a record high of Rs 17.6 crore (Rs 175 million, which is around $2.2 million) for the fiscal year of 2022. This is a 6.6% increase from last year's Rs 16.5 crore and an uptick of 25% from the average cost of Rs 14 crore in 2020, as stated by IBM analysts.

Few Indian businesses are included in the ever-increasing list of major data breaches. But data suggests that this streak of luck could soon be reaching its end. Increasing third-party security risks and a deficiency of security controls addressing them create the perfect conditions for a large-scale global supply chain attack facilitated by breached Indian business.

PCI DSS compliance ensures your customer’s credit card data is protected from hackers and compromise attempts. Though complying with this regulation isn’t easy, it is possible. To simplify this essential effort, we’ve compiled a checklist of the key security metrics that should be addressed to meet the compliance requirements of this critical information security standard.

NIST compliance is mandatory for any entity and service provider processing Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) on behalf of the US Federal Government. Given the substantial risk to national security if this sensitive data is exploited and the high potential of its compromise through supply chain attacks, the range of organizations expected to comply with this cybersecurity regulation is intentionally broad.

In the past, purchasing cybersecurity insurance was considered a luxury rather than a necessity. However, as the number of cyber attacks continues to grow, many educational institutions have started to buy insurance policies to cover the damaging costs of malware and ransomware attacks. The education sector saw the most cyber attacks in 2021 and 2022 compared to every other industry, including healthcare and finance.

While PCI compliance sets an industry benchmark surrounding cybersecurity for the financial sector, organizations shouldn’t rely on it to protect themselves against data breaches. The harsh truth is that cybercriminals will exploit any weakness in an organization’s IT infrastructure to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data, not just those covered by PCI DSS compliance requirements.

Managing individual business risks is difficult when silos exist. An enterprise risk management (ERM) framework consolidates risk management strategy across an entire organization, enabling better visibility, measurement, and management of business objectives. With a unified focus on addressing risk, compliance teams can universally improve regulatory compliance, governance, and risk management processes.

Independent school districts (ISDs) are the perfect target for cybercriminals because their networks are typically poorly secured. Many schools have inadequate security practices due to the lack of education, training, or funding. ISDs are publicly funded primary and secondary educational institutions, including elementary, middle, and high schools.

Keeping up with ever-changing regulatory requirements for cybersecurity can prove difficult for many organizations, which may unknowingly become non-compliant if they fail to adapt to new laws and regulations. Healthcare organizations and financial services must be even more vigilant with compliance. Both sectors are subject to even stricter requirements due to the large quantities of personally identifiable information (PII) they manage.

Vendor security questionnaires are frustrating, both to the organizations sending them and the vendors receiving them. While these frustrations remain unaddressed, they will only continue to impede the efficiency of vendor risk management programs. Fortunately, suffering through security assessments isn’t an unavoidable by-product of a Vendor Risk Management program. With the correct strategies, you can streamline the entire assessment questionnaire lifecycle. Read on to learn how.

Today’s threat landscape is driven by digital transformation and the outsourcing of critical operations to third-party vendors. Cybercriminals’ high demand for sensitive data paired with a historical lack of cybersecurity investment across the industry is cause for concern. Healthcare organizations recognize they have the choice to either increase their cyber spending or inevitably fall victim to a costly data breach. However, investing in cybersecurity solutions alone isn’t enough.

The Higher Education Community Vendor Assessment Toolkit (HECVAT) helps higher education mitigate the impact of security risks of vendor relationships offering cloud-based services. With supply chain attacks on the rise, and vendor risks ranking in the top three initial attack vectors for data breaches, HECVAT compliance is becoming a mandatory requirement for partnering with higher education institutions.

Having a plan to back up your data is one of the most important processes to protect the data in the event of a cyber attack. Should a malware or ransomware attack occur, you can boot a saved backup and restore your data to its previous state. Some organizations might use cloud-based solutions like Google Drive or Dropbox, while others prefer to keep their backups on an external hard drive. However, to ensure total data security, your backup strategy should include multiple solutions.

Data theft is a major cybercrime whose growth has been fuelled by rapid digital advancements in recent years. It involves the illegal storage or exfiltration of data or financial information. This can include passwords, algorithms, software code, proprietary technologies, or other sensitive data. To help you better protect your organization against data theft, this article will discuss what data theft is, how it occurs, and how you can prevent it.

Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) is a broad organizational strategy that aims to align an entire organization’s focus on the achievement of business objectives, the management of business risks, and regulatory compliance. A solid foundational framework enables your organization to continue strengthening and refining its GRC strategy over time. It ensures each department’s objectives align with the business as a whole.

Privileged access management is a package of cybersecurity strategies and access management tools used for controlling, monitoring, and safeguarding users with privileged access permissions. PAM is widely regarded by analysts and IT teams as a valuable and critical cybersecurity platform, as it's able to achieve high-security ROI.

A web application firewall is a network security solution for commercial use that protects servers from potential cyber attacks that can exploit a web application’s vulnerabilities.

Executive reporting in cybersecurity is important because it keeps business leaders and stakeholders informed about the progress of cybersecurity initiatives, allowing them to track cybersecurity alignment against overarching company goals.

Cyberattacks are growing in prevalence and sophistication, and so are the damage costs associated with these events. According to a 2022 cost of data breach report, the average damage cost of a data breach has reached a record high of USD 4.35 million. Provoked by increased data breach damage costs, a growing number of US businesses are partnering with Cybersecurity Insurers, who, in turn, respond to this increased demand by inflating cyber insurance premiums.

Identity theft is a serious problem that can have a lasting impact on your life. If your identity is stolen, it can be used to open new accounts, make purchases, and commit other crimes. The impact of identity theft can be devastating, but there are steps you can take to protect yourself. In this post, we'll discuss what identity theft is and how you can prevent it from happening.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a United States Federal Law designed to protect sensitive patient information from unauthorized disclosure, either through accidental data leakage or the result of a planned cyberattack.

Organizations of all sizes that store, process, or transmit credit card data must comply with PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards). The PCI standard’s 12 principal requirements can prove challenging for organizations to achieve and maintain, especially those in the highly-regulated financial industry. An upcoming PCI compliance audit may be cause for concern for many organizations, who are left scrambling to ensure their cybersecurity practices are up to scratch.

As businesses and organizations scale and grow, their network infrastructure can also grow increasingly large and complex. Using a flat network structure (all devices connected on one server) makes it easier for cybercriminals to roam freely and unimpeded in the system in the event of a successful cyber attack. Implementing network segmentation best practices can limit the scope of an attack, prevent malware from spreading, and disrupt lateral movements across your IT ecosystem.

In recent years, there has been increasing amounts of ransomware attacks on colleges and universities due to poor cybersecurity practices, a higher likelihood of ransom payment, and the value of information involved. The entire education sector performs poorly as a whole compared to other sectors when it comes to data security, and hackers are quickly taking notice.

The internet of things (IoT) is a system of interconnected computers, devices, digital machines, and objects, all marked with unique identifiers (UIDs) and enabled to transfer and share data over a network. It was first coined by Kevin Ashton in 1999 when he envisioned a future where things communicated with each other, apart from human interaction With the evolution of web-enabled smart homes and smart devices in nearly every corner of life, IoT attack surfaces begin to emerge.