The Expert Podcast

There is trouble brewing in the cybersecurity industry. The cyberdefense industry is facing significant challenges. A couple of good articles, including one from Fortune, discuss how to get into this high-demand industry. high demand, that's an understatement. Why so? Because cybersecurity teams are now starting to be overwhelmed by the number of attacks that are happening.

In fact, Zidnia says we should all be worried. This situation has a massive impact on teams, leaving people and businesses more vulnerable. That sounds like an ominous statement. What is going on?
Well, cybersecurity sounds like a nice tech job—an IT job. You prevent attacks from happening against your company, you prevent hackers from infiltrating your system, and you prevent ransomware. Well, that's all well and good if you can keep up with the threats. In fact, for most medium- to small-sized companies, the threats are changing faster than you can train your IT people.

That's why, a lot of times, cyber insurance is a good addition to those layers because your insurance company will help keep you updated. So, your IT people don't have to find out about attacks on other companies all over the world. The insurance companies will know about this because they have to pay the claims.

If you are a company that does cybersecurity with your IT department, you may want to look at some outside resources. Because, look, even the largest companies can't keep up with the changing landscape of cybersecurity. It's changing fast. And the hackers have large companies with 50, 100, or 150 people that are constantly developing new ways to hack your system. This is their full-time job, and they have hundreds of people. What chances do you have if you're just a two-party or a two-person IT department or a medium company with maybe 50 employees and three people in IT?

Maybe your web developer does a little bit of cyber defense. It's no match for professional international IT hackers that are out there trying to break into every system they can. Even if the insurance never gets used, the suggestions that the insurer will give you, sometimes requirements, might be worth the weight of the premium.

Either way, just be aware of the negative landscape of cyberattacks. Worst-case scenario, put every ounce of defense you can into your system: updates on software patches, making sure you have a good inventory of all your devices. Make sure your IT people drop everything else that they're working on at least once a month and take a look only at cyber defense.

If they're working on coding your new website, maybe they're working on things like e-commerce payment processing or marketing development. Have them put that out of their heads for a day or two once a month and just look at cyber defense. Make sure you're putting and allocating good resources of not just money but time and attention into preventing a disaster from your company being hacked, shut down, all your data being exfiltrated onto the dark web, or even locked up where you have to pay a big ransom to even just use your computers again.