Resilience in a borderless world: The challenges and opportunities of cybersecurity

For larger companies, cyberattacks are an inevitable reality, whether noticed or unnoticed.

The expanding threat landscape is also confirmed by the Danish Defense Intelligence Service’s unit, the Center for Cyber Security, in their 2024 Threat Assessment, where areas such as cybercrime, cyber espionage, and cyber activism fall into the high-risk category. 🚫

Danish businesses and their infrastructure are attractive targets for cybercriminals, whether the goal is to steal sensitive personal data from the healthcare sector, extort financial institutions with stolen credit information, or sabotage critical infrastructure to create societal instability. 🫢

There are many cases, but when Maersk lost billions in revenue in 2017 due to system paralysis for several days, it became clear to many that cybersecurity is not just about protecting trade secrets – for many businesses, it can mean survival or bankruptcy. ⚓

The path to greater security is, however, being extensively examined and analyzed. KPMG released their assessments in the report “Cybersecurity Considerations 2024: The Financial Sector,” highlighting three key considerations.

In the section “Enhancing Security with Automation,” challenges and opportunities are addressed:

Challenges:

🔶 The lack of qualified experts and resources makes it difficult to close existing security gaps, while cyberattacks and data volumes grow exponentially.
🔶 The rapid development of new technologies constantly creates new attack opportunities. Limited resources make it hard to manage and close vulnerabilities in time before new threats emerge.
🔶 A complete overview of assets is essential to identify outdated systems and devices, which pose significant cybersecurity risks.
🔶 System dependencies mean that an attack on one system can quickly spread to others, giving hackers time and opportunity to cause even greater damage.

Opportunities:

🔷 Update security systems to eliminate manual processes, which create bottlenecks and delay effective threat management.
🔷 Implement real-time updates of assets like servers, computers, and routers to ensure continuous compliance with security protocols.
🔷 Leverage algorithms that can instantly respond and block network attacks as soon as they occur.
🔷 Use machine learning to take over initial threat assessments, so that threats are automatically analyzed and only escalated to level 2 when necessary.