“I am convinced that there are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked and those that will be. And even they are converging into one category: companies that have been hacked and will be hacked again.” – Robert Mueller III, Former Director of the FBI

Criminal trickery is an unavoidable aspect of human psychology. From the times of Jesse James and Billy The Kid to Frank William Abagnale Jr., thieves have been robbing individuals, trains, banks, and every day people alike.

As the notorious bank robber, Willie Sutton once proclaimed, “That’s where the money is.”

Moving into the modern age, outlaws still exist, but many have taken a new form: Hackers and cybercriminals.

Today’s cyber attacks can have dramatic and long-term consequences. This stretches from the impact attacks have on organizational efforts and intellectual property, all the way down to the individual level; as is seen when personal data stored by companies become compromised.

Effectively responding to the proliferating cybercrime is a massive challenge as there is enormous economic incentives for digital crooks to break into various business and governmental systems. For instance, a standard ransomware attack stands to generate a 1,425 percent ROI. That’s because all that’s needed is a laptop to wreak havoc on a corporation.

What is even more disturbing is that experts estimate roughly 80% of all digital vulnerabilities are the result of poor or neglected cybersecurity measures. Raising the bar and implementing specific measures to reduce the ROI that a criminal can receive from their efforts is necessary.

It helps to understand this by examining four layers of defense: Protections, segmentation, detection, and recovery. Currently, most data and system security products focus on the last two layers. Changing the focus to protections and segmentation—prevention and compartmentalization of data—re-focuses your defenses on increasing the ROI of your preventive measures and decreasing the ROI for attackers’ efforts.

Help increase the ROI of your security measures and protect your business by implementing these 3 cybersecurity strategies.

Employ Blockchain Technology

The buzz surrounding blockchain technology is nearly inescapable these days. The tech has been touted as a potential method to revolutionize everything from banking to travel; this includes digital security as well.

For the uninitiated, blockchain technology is what underpins cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. The system works by allowing clients to validate each request without having to trust the central servers or the people that operate them.

Because of this decentralized nature, blockchain technology offers corporations the possibility of secure records, thereby reducing the scope of breaches. Your costs will be lower and so attackers will gain less from each breach..

Jerry Cuomo, IBM Fellow and Vice President of Blockchain Technologies, believes that blockchain can eliminate much of the threats facing businesses and individuals today:

“Imagine a world where you are in direct control of your personal information; a world where you can limit and control how much information you share while retaining the ability to transact in the world. This is self-sovereign identity, and it is already here. The blockchain is the underlying technology paving the path to self-sovereign identity through decentralized networks. It ensures privacy and trust, where transactions are secure, authenticated and verifiable and endorsed by relevant, permissioned participants.”

Cuomo has also noted that certain government entities and corporate organizations have implemented blockchain networks to combat cybercrime.

Convert to the Cloud

When speaking to certain business applications regarding finances, marketing efforts, production systems, and the like, a wise decision would be to move these aspects over to the cloud.

By utilizing cloud technology, business gain access to a constantly monitored infrastructure, secure servers that span a variety of locations that are more effective in protecting sensitive data, and other security features that present compelling claims.

A variety of complex security management issues can, therefore, be outsourced to a more knowledgeable organization. This can drastically help your organization by:

  • Lightening its workload relating to security
  • Making your business more secure by putting sensitive data in the hands of professionals.

While there have been memorable instances of cloud breaches, security information resource Tripwire notes that, “. . . breaches were a result of human error, not shortcomings of the cloud.”

This argument is rather solid considering that a 2014 IBM report detailed that in over 95% of security failure occurrences, human error was a contributing element.

Even if companies feel like they can handle their security better than a cloud vendor, if they deploy features using blockchain on the cloud they get the best of both worlds; outsourced IT while still having complete control over access to data.

Create a Culture of Security

Scads of businesses fail to properly implement a security-focused culture. This failure on management’s end leads to employees becoming one of the biggest security threats that an organization faces.

While these folks likely aren’t hacking systems themselves, they are leaving the door wide open for such instances to occur.

The biggest challenge for improving security is around management changing processes and fixing and adding security as part of the requirements and design process; rather than adding on features after the fact.

It is also wise for management to hire a security expert to train their staff on sensitive matters as this is likely to produce the most advantageous outcome.

In today’s culture of hackers, cybercriminals, and other contemptuous characters, it is the responsibility of all parties – individuals, employees, and executive teams – to push forward with innovative and practical new strategies and systems to ensure the safety of consumers and corporations.

Implement these tools and tactics into your business’s security portfolio for reduced chances of becoming the next target of a hacker seeking to get paid.