According to statistics, the average cost of a cyber security breach is about $4,000,000 - $5,000,000 – this figure is still rising. The two top targeted sectors of cybersecurity attacks are healthcare and financial services because healthcare holds massive patients’ data and financial hold monetary value. There are some common patterns of recent cyber security breaches:

1. Initial Access: Primarily through phishing, exploitation of public-facing applications, or use of stolen valid credentials from prior breaches.

2. Evasion & Persistence: Attackers immediately disable security tools, create new user accounts, and deploy admin tools to avoid detection.

3. Lateral Movement & Discovery: Using compromised identities, they move through the network, often focusing on cloud storage and identity management systems to map resources and elevate privileges.

4. Exfiltration & Impact: Data is staged and exfiltrated to cloud storage or attacker-controlled servers before ransomware is deployed, ensuring leverage even if backups prevent encryption.

Key Recommendations for Organizations

· Conduct Regular Security Assessment to Secure IT Assets: It is highly advised to conduct suitable security assessments to secure IT assets in organization, these security assessments include penetration test, vulnerability assessment, baseline audit, IT audit, source code review, smart contract audit, cyber forensic etc.

· Zero Trust is Non-Negotiable: It is advised to implement strict "never trust, always verify" principles, especially for identity and access management (IAM) and Phishing Emails.

· Prioritize Identity Security: It is a good practice to enforce phishing-resistant MFA, strict privilege access management (PAM), and continuous monitoring of identity anomalies.

· Assume Breach, Hunt Continuously: Invest in threat hunting and endpoint detection and response (EDR) to find adversaries who bypass perimeter defenses.

· Prepare for Extortion, Not Just Encryption: Update incident response plans to include data extortion and communication strategies with customers and regulators.

· Invest in AI-Powered Defense: Leverage AI for log analysis, anomaly detection, and accelerating SOC analyst response times.

Conclusion

AI and automation give attackers scale and speed, while defenders struggle with complexity and talent shortages. The core tenets of cyber security to safeguard your digital world still remain — assess IT assets regularly, protect identity, assume breach, improve organizational level anti-phishing awareness and invest in resilience.