Cybercrime is growing up. Increasingly, on the Dark Web, customers can find a wide variety of hacking activities offered as a “service.” There is everything from DDOS attacks launched by massive ‘botnets to carefully orchestrated phishing campaigns to ransomware attacks.

If you’ve got the cash, the hackers have the services.

They’re also getting increasingly savvy in terms of communicating with each other, agreeing not to compete to keep prices high, staking out digital real estate and getting better at product positioning to make their offerings more attractive.

It would be a mistake to say that cybercrime is becoming mainstream, but it is true that cybercrime rings are increasingly adopting all the hallmarks of mainstream businesses, including, in some cases, customer service departments.

2016 saw the most data breaches in the history of the internet. There’s absolutely no reason to believe that 2017 won’t handily beat whatever 2016’s final number is, and there’s no end in sight.

As these groups continue to grow in sophistication, their service offerings will expand, and collaboration between groups will continue to increase.

Steve Durbin, the managing director of the Information Security Forum, recently said he expects this to be the single biggest threat and security challenge of 2017 and for the foreseeable future.

As a small to medium-sized business owner, this represents an enormous challenge for you and your IT staff.

IT security professionals are not only increasingly outmanned, but also outgunned. Managers are increasingly realizing that ramping up spending on digital security is not enough, and employee education will only get you so far.

Taken together, this creates enormous challenges for business at all levels.

The good news is, you don’t have to go at it alone. Our talented experts can review the current state of your firm’s digital security and chart a course that will keep you and your data safe. Call us today and let’s get started.