Cyberattacks are incredibly frequent, with incidents occurring approximately every 39 seconds. This translates to more than 2,000 attacks per day.
One of the key talks at Wednesday’s American Chamber of Commerce of Trinidad and Tobago’s Tech Hub Islands Summit addressed the ongoing threat of cybercrime.
Director of Cybersecurity at Symptai Consulting, Rory Ebanks, focused on ‘Cyber Warfare and the New Digital Battlefield.’
“Let’s think about the monetary value in terms of a breach. On average it costs about US$4.88 million. This is global statistics, whenever a company suffers a breach. That is a 10% increase compared to 2023.”
The cybersecurity expert noted that cybercriminals are evolving at an alarming pace as they weaponise artificial intelligence and deepfake technology.
“On average, it takes about a year for an organisation to identify that they have been breached through a compromised credential. Imagine a hacker gaining access to your user name and password. Do you have any controls in place to identify that?”
The Summit also featured a technology exhibition. Instructor at the University of Trinidad and Tobago, David Edwards, said the academic institution is making sure no one is left behind in this new digital era.
“We actually want to educate. We want to have this lab where persons from SMEs, microenterprises, small enterprises could come, and they could actually learn how to use some of these tools. Even open-source tools, so the cost that would impact their business wouldn’t be that much if they’re using open-source tools. So AI has become very easy to implement, actually. So we want to show these persons how easy it is to implement in their business.”
AMCHAM T&T’s annual Tech Hub Islands Summit began on Tuesday and ended on Wednesday.