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Among the shortcomings, Cisco found a 10 percent drop in up-to-date security infrastructure reported by organizations over the course of a year. The company analyzed 115,000 devices; 92 percent were running software with known vulnerabilities. Cisco Principal Engineer Jason Brvenik told VOA attackers are fairly indiscriminate in determining whom to target, instead leveraging opportunities to increase efficiency and profits.
Cyberattacks
"It doesn't matter if they're attacking a person for a cyber ransom or a business. What they do is they find out what they can leverage and then they use it," Brvenik said. He said defenders, as they move toward more continuous analytics models, are able to more quickly detect an attack and outsource instant responses. "Numerically, we see that as an industry, it's a 100- to 200-day estimate for the detection of a breach, but more modern technologies as people deploy them are able to push that number down to a matter of hours," he said. As of May 2015, Cisco said it reduced the median time to detect threats within its networks to roughly 17 hours. The fight against cybercrime has opened a largely untapped job market for cybersecurity practitioners, which Forbes reports is expected to grow from $75 billion in 2015 to $170 billion by 2020.
Demand for professionals
Tara Sinclair, chief economist of Indeed, a global job site company based in the U.S., said employers’ security concerns have led to a large increase in demand for trained professionals in the field. "They're definitely concerned about their businesses," Sinclair said. "They're concerned about having employees that are protective of their property and making sure that they're not going to be attacked."
Globally, Cisco has estimated 1 million unfilled jobs in security. Symantec, the world’s largest security software vendor, expects this gap to grow to 1.5 million by 2019. Brvenik said many universities are doing their part to bring qualified talent to the market. Among businesses, he said, 90 percent of those surveyed by Cisco reported having programs in place for cyber awareness and training.
Businesses Struggle to Keep Up in Fight Against Cyberattacks
Part of the uptick stems from federal agencies improving their ability to identify and detect incidents, the annual performance review from the Office and Management and Budget said. The report, released on Friday, defines cyber incidents broadly as “a violation or imminent threat of violation of computer security policies, acceptable use policies, or standard computer security practices.” Only a small number of the incidents would be considered as significant data breaches.
National security and intelligence officials have long warned that cyber attacks are among the most serious threats facing the United States. President Barack Obama asked Congress last month for $19 billion for cyber security funding across the government in his annual budget request, an increase of $5 billion over the previous year. The government's Office of Personnel Management was victim of a massive hack that began in 2014 and was detected last year. Some 22 million current and former federal employees and contractors in addition to family members had their Social Security numbers, birthdays, addresses and other personal data pilfered in the breach.
That event prompted the government to launch a 30-day “cyber security sprint” to boost cyber security within each federal agency by encouraging adoption of multiple-factor authentication and addressing other vulnerabilities. “Despite unprecedented improvements in securing federal information resources … malicious actors continue to gain unauthorized access to, and compromise, federal networks, information systems, and data,” the report said.
Number of U.S. government 'cyber incidents' jumps in 2015
The Marine Corps Cyberspace Warfare Group was activated Friday in a ceremony at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, a Marine Corps statement said. Its mission is to man, train and equip Marine cyberspace mission teams to perform both defensive and offensive operations in support of U.S. Cyber Command and Marine Forces Cyberspace Command.
The unit has "a few" cyber teams up and running, the statement said; however, it won't be fully operational until sometime next year. "We've always had the means to communicate and the means to protect that communication, but today we're in an environment where those methods are more and more reliant on a system of transmissions, routers and networks," the unit's commander, Col. Ossen D'Haiti, said in the statement. "So, the ability to protect that, the ability to control that and deny an adversary to interdict that, is crucial to command and control."
Marines with Marine Corps Cyberspace Warfare Group prepare to post the guidon during an activation of command ceremony at Fort George G. Meade, Md.
Everything from power grids, banking, government operations to defense contractor weapons' plans have shifted online in the past few decades. That information is a tempting target for both state-sponsored hackers and criminal organizations that are becoming increasingly sophisticated at cybertheft.
During a town hall meeting with Okinawa Marines in November, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller lamented that China had stolen military secrets from the United States. "While we've been fighting, our adversaries, many of them in this part of the world -- pick one: China, North Korea, Iran, Russia -- what have they been doing? Making money, buying new gear, stealing all of our secrets," he said. "Ever look at all the Chinese equipment? What's it look like? It looks like our stuff. How is that? They stole our stuff, fair and square." The Navy, Army, Air Force and Coast Guard are also actively recruiting cyber soldiers and standing up their own cyber units and programs.
Marines Forming New Cyberwarrior Unit | Military.com
