Global terrorism is on the rise and spreading, on the digital front, cyber-crime is big business for hacktivists, syndicates. As they honed their skills it's less about disruption and more about destruction and focus on cyber crime, cyber warfare. In 2008, we witnessed a cyber crime that was disruptive with TJX to destructive with Target in 2013. These two eye-opening scenarios have created concerns with Executives and Board members. Realizing that such cyber attacks will lead to shareholder reduction, additional recipients of compliance and legal action and ultimately giving them a black eye to "status quo" in the market.

Digitization is creating an extended attack surface of new threat vectors and access points for syndicates and hacktivists. Company-wide internal/external employees, third party vendors(Transaction), representing law firms(Intellectual property, trade secrets) all sharing data across WiFi, cloud platforms conducting business in the home, over social medias creating and widening opportunities for syndicates. Internal employees with sensitive access present a tremendous threat without auditing, controlled environments make them a significant target.

Attackers use a variety of techniques to expose system weakness and access virtually all perimeter defense systems. There are some these vectors used, such as Network Intrusion, websites, web applications, malware (APT Advanced Persistent Threat), social engineering, spear phishing and email attacks, Trojans, zero-day exploits.

To identify these advanced threats organizations must mitigate cyber threat through he uses of firewalls, antivirus, intrusion detection. No network goes without vulnerabilities, and hackers that find their way in may be there for a very long time. The key is to detect quickly, but the double edge sword is companies very rarely will spend the money to match the hacker's creative abilities. The problem that actually exists here is the gap between cyber security professionals and the executive board members. In blog post "Complexity and Commoditization" - these two destructive forces play a big part in that gap. The gap is the complexity of the solution out running the knowledge of stakeholders such as board members.

In a time of war, a good field commander always evaluates his weaknesses, cyber threats are no different preparedness and anticipation are the keys. Syndicates are doing their homework and threat actors will complete heavy reconnaissance and even develop custom malware. Developing a Threat intelligence strategy and sharing this strategy will help to assess and re-assess possible breaches.

In conclusion, the cyber crime, cyber threat and cyber terrorism landscape is continuously changing and demands the assistance of Executive Stakeholders create a holistic approach to cyber security.