The COVID-19 virus has attacked more than just health and people’s freedom of movement. It has also succeeded at undermining online security as more organizations and people rely on their online presence exclusively and turn to internet-based work, study, purchases and communications. The traffic spikes characteristic of the early part of the crisis have started to stabilize, meaning that uptime should also be stable for regular traffic, regardless of volume if you’re monitoring your availability and making provisions for redundancy. But irregular traffic booms, which are often the harbinger of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is entirely another creature.

A recent Security Affairs article posits: “There’s a prevailing mindset that suggests if organizations ban all the things that pose risks to overall cybersecurity, they’re taking the most effective approach to make their organizations secure.” It goes on to explain that while this might seem like the best way to manage the constant onslaught of security issues, it isn’t necessarily the best way to do business, nor does it offer the most flexible way to handle technology and its constant changes.

Back in May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) launched in Europe, and if nothing else, preparation for its taking effect has made clear that privacy and security are intertwined concepts. Data privacy - and the unprecedented breaches in data protection and exploitation of private data we’ve seen - has become more than just talk. And more importantly, perhaps, cybersecurity has become a concern for everyone in a company - not just the domain of IT professionals who specialize in (or maybe don’t even specialize in) security. Security - and by extension - safeguarding privacy - has become the concern of senior executives and corporate boards as well, given the severe and far-reaching consequences of data breaches in the post-GDPR era.

It’s a given that almost every day, a new cybersecurity threat will make its way into the news. With more specialized and targeted attacks launching on a near-constant basis, security - and vigilance about it - remains high atop most companies’ priorities. The pace at which security threats arise isn’t slowing down any time soon.