Two Sides of the Coin: Cyber Benefits and Cyber Threats

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, so in anticipation of the “festivities,” we are launching a multi-part series on cybersecurity and cybercrime today. Then, during October, we’ll dive a little deeper into trends that are affecting security today and also look towards the future of cybersecurity.

Cyber threats emerged in tandem with cyber benefits

“This mode of instantaneous communication must inevitably become an instrument of immense power, to be wielded for good or evil.”

Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, said these words nearly two centuries ago, yet they could just have easily been uttered today about the Internet. In many ways, the Internet is fulfilling long-held hopes of humankind: distance learning, telemedicine, e-commerce, virtual communities, and instant global communications are now established realities. The Internet also can dramatically improve productivity. As a result, information and communications technology is now embedded at the core of operations for governments, financial systems, industries and critical infrastructure.

Parallel with these benefits, we have seen the Internet wielded for evil as well. The malicious and criminal use of cyberspace today is both widespread and highly innovative. Cybercriminals have become a permanent part of the Internet’s ecosystem, where they are responsible for billions in financial losses and putting critical infrastructures at risk. Trojan horses, botnets, viruses, worms, phishing and other techniques are appearing in greater numbers, and they are constantly evolving in complexity. The pace of criminal innovation requires constant effort to keep countermeasures up to date.

It is critical that companies quickly move to a process-driven model to respond to threats and manage risks. Fighting or blocking new technology should not be the strategy. Instead, companies need to be flexible enough to accommodate their end users’ evolving needs, while providing and maintaining a safe environment for their patients and business partners.

With the ever changing landscape of cybercrime and the the sophisticated approaches taken by the “bad actors”, Dell takes these challenges seriously and strives to protect our customers and business partners. From investigating innovative ways to develop a secure supply chain, to integrating security encryption and other technologies into our hardware and security services, Dell is working toward a holistic security approach that traverses all components and product groups to ensure we do our part in protecting our customers computing environments.

For the latest news from Dell and IT industry on cybersecurity, follow @DellSecurity on Twitter.

Next up in the series: Protecting Data from cybercriminals

About the Author: Pam Cawthorn