According to a recently published cyber security report, the total global cost of cyber crime is expected to exceed $10.5 TRILLION dollars by 2025.  This makes cyber crime more lucrative than the entire global trade in marijuana, cocaine and heroin combined.

It's no wonder that hackers are stepping up their efforts, especially as more companies make a shift to work-from-home and work-from-anywhere models.  Whenever you have computers connecting remotely to your network, keep cyber security in mind.

Take a look at these facts:

• 300 billion passwords were stolen this year and used in automated hacking attacks.
• Cybercriminals view the COVID pandemic as a gold mine. The volume of fraudulent emails and text messages have spiked by more than 667% since the first month of the pandemic.
• In the first half of 2019 alone, data breaches exposed 4.1 billion sensitive patient records.
• 68% of business leaders feel that their cybersecurity risks are increasing - and they aren't wrong.
• 92% of all malware is delivered by email.
• Small businesses experience the highest targeted malicious email rate worldwide. One in every 323 email messages sent to a small business contains malware or viruses.
• One in 13 web requests lead to malware-laden websites or services.
• Hackers attack vulnerable computers on average every 39 seconds.
• An unpatched and unsecured computer can be hit by thousands of automated hacking attacks each day. The average is 2,244 attacks daily.
• Ransomware attacks in the healthcare industry are predicted to quadruple this year.
• The value of available personalized data in 2020 is nearly $1.2 trillion.
• In June 2020, Stanford University estimate that approximately 42% of the U.S. workforce was working from home.  Work-from-home isn't going anywhere.
• Nearly 93% of households with school-age children report some form of distance learning in 2020.  It's increasingly important to secure every computer.
• Cybersecurity budgets have been forced to increase by almost 60% in 2020 to deal with rapidly evolving threats.
• The average cost in downtime and lost time due to a malware attack is 50 days.
• It takes, on average, 189+ days to detect a business data breach if you aren't actively preventing one.  If you aren't keeping an eye on your cyber security - who is?