Let's talk Sony and IMF: Fail
So unless you have been living under a rock (or on vacation!), a barrage of cyber attacks have been going on the past 1-2 months now. The primary treasure taken was the databases and customer information, though it definitely has had an extended impact beyond just data theft.
Sony, the primary slap-dummy in all this, was hit repeatable, with the Play Station Gaming Network Customer Information the target. What's ironic about this is they constantly reported they had no idea how it happened, weren't sure exactly what happened, and didn't seem to be in much of a rush to stop the bleeding. I'll tell you what happened: You got hit, hit again, and again, and again, and then once we were done with you, we went to your cousin's in the other countries (Brazil) and ran the same game on them. Talk about getting kicked when down. And then kicking your family, friends, mechanic, neighbors at the same time. Ouch.
Something like that just stinks of not properly monitoring your external networks, but also really sounds like there is an element of single point of failure. Basically, once they figured out how to get in to the primary domain, they were given access into everything else; or were able to quickly figure it out. Let's not even talk about the IPS/IDS not communicating with the other nodes.
Our friends at the IMF have been getting hammered with sex scandals from their former head, but now they report a cyber attack happened in mid-May. This time the objective was to get an inside presence from the installation of mal/spyware in order to gain access to personal information for fraudulent usage. The IMF also had several employee's laptops compromised and was then used to access critical systems within.
What does this all mean? All of this again shows just how real, sophisticated, and powerful a cyberattack can be. One big thing that companies of all sizes have a hard time with is monitoring their systems and taking action on events that look suspicious in nature. Big companies are hit a lot more than a small business or one, two, or three person firm, but the impact is still the same. Loss of revenue, loss of reputation, and loss of data, which can turn into serious legal matters.
The good news is you can shield yourself enough to at least provide some insulation from all of this.
1. Have an active firewall operating and monitor it daily
2. Review and manage all access to sensitive systems and accounts
3. Have your network and systems scanned for vulnerabilities (virus, malware, open ports, attack attempts)
4. Communicate immediately to customers and clients if any sensitive customer data was breached or accessed in anyway
5. Implement some system to manage and classify all data residing in your servers and systems (or cloud service)
I know that's not the most advanced and complex system, but it well let you implement a basic security architecture which you can manage yourself.
Good luck and you know who to ask if you have any questions.