Not to sound paranoid, but there are dishonest people everywhere looking for an opportunity to steal from you. Sad, but true.
A purse left unguarded in a supermarket, an unlocked door on your car, an open garage, an elderly person on a sidewalk, a swarm at a jewelery store. Every profession has its share of crooks, and why would IT be any different. In particular, internet access means the thief can steal from unsuspecting and careless victimes from half a world away and the risk of capture is virtually nil.
Over and above regular crooks, nation states are involved and they have the time and funding to hire the best hackers and deploy enormous resources to disrupt western businesses as well as to generate revenue.
I think hackers have a number of ways to infiltrate business systems and most exploit systems running older software, software not updated on a regular basis, poorly designed or utilized firewalls and sloppy users who take shortcuts with their passwords.
As individuals all we can do is to use a password manager to generate relatively tough to crack passwords, keep our OS updated, use antivirus software, stay away from dodgy web pages and never click on files or URL links in emails unless you are dead certain the source is safe.
Businesses have to do the same degree of due diligence and make certain backups of the OS, applications and data are done regularily and kept offsite and offline.
