The Effects of an Aging Cybersecurity Infrastructure

Keeping up with cybersecurity is a worldwide challenge. In Beyond Trust's 2017 Federal Cybersecurity Threat Survey Report, 42% of 105 senior IT professionals had experienced a data breach in the last six months and one in eight had experienced a data breach in the last month. The average costs of these data breaches are more than $91,000, while the highest profile breaches can run into the millions of dollars in damages.

An aging IT infrastructure makes systems more vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Four in five of the respondents admit that an aging IT infrastructure has a somewhat extremely large impact on their cybersecurity risk.Furthermore, 61% believe an aging infrastructure is a roadblock to achieving federal cybersecurity mandate compliance[1].

Every year,information technology improves at a pace that most organizations find too challenging to match. International Data Corporation (IDC) released a studyin 2016 on computer servers, a central IT asset for medium to large organizations.The report showed the depreciation of the servers' ability to meet performance requirements over a seven year period.

According to the study[2], the IT asset declines by:

• 22% in year three
• 33% in year four
• 59% in year seven

This consistent change in IT is directly related to technology's capacity to maintain an acceptable cybersecurity posture. In 2015, Cisco, a worldwide leader in information technology and networking, analyzed 115,000 Cisco computing and networking devices. Cisco carried out their analysis on the internet and across customer environments to draw attention to the security risks that can occur when organizations are not properly maintaining aging infrastructure or updating vulnerable software systems. They found that 106,000 of the 115,000 Cisco devices, 92%,had known vulnerabilities in the software they were running[3].

As daunting as it is to achieve and maintain a reliable cybersecurity posture in today's technological climate, Wilson Consulting Group offers services which help organizations to meet the demands. We recommend that businesses analyze their key success factors that define their needs for business continuity. Our Cybersecurity Assessment service will help organizations to develop a plan of action tailored to specific needs.

Our Cybersecurity Assessment service:

• Identifies and evaluates threats
• Uses state-of-the-art security techniques and mechanisms to determine risk profile of organizations
• Informs organizations of their weaknesses
• Provides clear and concise recommendations
• Provides organizations with remediation plan

Please contact us here to learn more about how we will assist your firm in modernizing your cybersecurity infrastructure.

[1]https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/assets/offers/pdfs/midyear-security-report-2016.pdf