Security is one of the major aspects in every company. It is crucial for all types of organizations, and especially for those who possess copyright items, to have a serious protection system that will help them to avoid unwanted interventions into their systems and the steal and further release of confidential data. We can observe the necessity of careful check and intensive protection on the example of Sony Pictures, which one of Fortune Magazine contributors called ‘the hack of the century’. In addition, it is claimed that Sony studious could have predicted the hack and could have secured their systems more carefully to escape such a disarray (Elkind, 2015).
It would be useful to look at the Sony case in more details. Various news portal highlighted the news that a famous company was hacked and told a story of how an organization found out about the break in their system. One morning, when employees turned on their computers, they received a greeting in neon lights on their monitors that stated, “Hacked by #GOP”. Later, multiple portals revealed that GOP in short stood for the “Guardians of Peace”. Along with this greeting, there were various threats that all information will be revealed to publicity, if a company did not meet the requests, though those requests were not specified. Moreover, the message also contained various links that gave an opportunity to download freely “huge amounts of what appears to be data from Sony Pictures’ internal networks” (Peterson, 2014). It was a real shock for the company and its employees, because such an information leak represented a serious issue of security and showed that the systems did not have enough protection.
One of the versions were that North Korea stood behind the hack of Sony Pictures. Different information portals put forward various hypothesis, some of the supported the version of North Korean involvement due to the expected release of the film “Interview”, that kind of compromised the country’s leader; others claimed that it was a group of hackers who had nothing to do with North Korea and did it for certain commercial gains (Gilbert & Platt, 2015). There is still no clear evidence, who stood behind this scandal, but the outcome remains to be the same: a famous company of Hollywood experienced a serious information leak because of a well-planned hack, which is unacceptable in any type of business in retail and in other industries.
Besides the hack of Sony studios, many other large companies experienced this unpleasant thing. For instance, also in the year 2014, eBay announced that their system was also hacked and that hackers managed to steal the persona records of more than 200 million users, which is a serious information leak. Companies from other industries, such as healthcare sector, have also experienced hacks throughout the history. For instance, Montana Health Department also stated that they had an information leak that had an effect on more than 1 million clients. Healthcare institutions should also place an emphasis on information protection, because health conditions of people is a confidential information and its opening may lead to serious issues. Many other companies have gone through the hacks of their systems, and from the year 2013 the level of electronic crimes has significantly increased, which points at the necessity of investing in security and risk management (McGregor, 2014).
Information is critical for any business, because information is, in fact, the essence of the company and its main and most valuable property. It is crucial to manage the information in an efficient way that will not only offer comfortable use, but also high level of protection. At this point, it is important to mention that in a modern world most of the companies store their information and other related data in various technology tools. A modern world offers a variety of methods to store data, without using endless catalogues and physical storages. Special professionals create special systems that store data in a sorted order. Moreover, those systems limit the access according to the requirements, so that only those who have the permission can access certain type of information. Those systems can have a search engine, which also significantly simplifies the process of finding necessary documents or other items. Such systems help to save time and contribute to the working process due to their ease in use and constant accessibility. What is more, electronic storage systems help to decrease labor costs and save space and time for the storage maintenance (Lohrey).
Therefore, due to the fact, that many companies currently implement electronic storages, it is important to pay attention on web security, in order to escape the issues that happened to Sony Pictures and to many other famous companies. The company should not be a large corporation in order to recognize a need in appropriate data protection, because any company should care about the clients and about their safety. In addition, information retrieval by hackers can lead to various types of lawsuits from different stakeholders of the company.
Web security and risk management strategies play an essential role in business, though not all of the organization are willing to invest in these spheres of operations due to their belief that nothing can happen to their data even with a minimum level of protection. The point is that security measures require investments, and it is a challenging process to balance the need of increasing the profits and at the same time implementing serious preventive measures and designing risk management techniques. There is a special process that the companies can implement in their activities in order to protect themselves from any types of interventions - security risk management. Security risk management tries to match the goal of profits increase and the goal of possessing high level of web security. In other words, security risk management is “an extension of the issue management process”, which implies additional protection to the company’s assets and copyrights (Mackey, p.42, 2003). In such a way, we can see that it is possible for every organization to implement security risk management, so that the professionals can balance the goals and can make sure that valuable data of the company is safe within all the systems.
Thus, we can see that the process of web security and risk management should be of a high importance for the company. Investments in these spheres of operations can help to avoid significantly higher costs that a company may have in case of any type of information leak. Companies should carefully consider the fact that they are responsible for the safety of information in the eyes of their stakeholders. In such a way, every company should take a lesson from the organizations that have already gone through the hack. Web security and risk management are crucial for every business, and the increase of investments in those fields will justify itself in the future.
References
Elkind, P. (2015, July 1). Sony Pictures: Inside the Hack of the Century. Retrieved January 19, 2016, from http://fortune.com/sony-hack-part-1/
Gilbert, D., & Platt, G. (2015, January 15). John McAfee: 'I know who hacked Sony Pictures - and it wasn't North Korea' Retrieved January 19, 2016, from http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/john-mcafee-i-know-who-hacked-sony-pictures-it-wasnt-north-korea-1483581
Lohrey, J. (n.d.). The Importance of Information Storage & Retrieval Systems in an Organization. Retrieved January 19, 2016, from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/importance-information-storage-retrieval-systems-organization-75891.html
Mackey, D. (2003). Web security for network and system administrators. Boston, Mass.: Course Technology.
McGregor, J. (2014, July 28). The Top 5 Most Brutal Cyber Attacks Of 2014 So Far. Retrieved January 19, 2016, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2014/07/28/the-top-5-most-brutal-cyber-attacks-of-2014-so-far/#2715e4857a0b5e7428dc21a6
Peterson, A. (2014, December 18). The Sony Pictures hack, explained. Retrieved January 19, 2016, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/12/18/the-sony-pictures-hack-explained/
