Top Cyber Threats Impacting Organizations:
Prevention Strategies Explained

In this era where information forms the foundation of organizations and the only means to hold on to businesses require the employees to be severely connected through internet and communicate, security vulnerabilities have been exposed massively and the Cyber-attackers have found ways to exploit those vulnerabilities. They are targeting the huge amount of data that get passed on over networks and misuse those for their personal benefits.
Hence, recently, the virtually connected world has experienced a surge in the number of cyber threats that forced many of them to lose critical business/ personal data and make a payment of hefty penalty amount.
Few common threats that a business could face are:

1.       MALWARE

Malware is a code with malignant goal that typically steals data or destroys something on computer. Depending on the damage it causes, the malware could be categorized into various sections.
Malware is encountered if one has OS vulnerabilities or if he downloads some software or email attachment which were compromised with.
 

2.       PHISHING

Often posing as a request for data from a trusted third party, these attacks are sent via email messages and ask users to click on a link and enter their personal data. Phishing emails have gotten much more refined in recent years making it difficult for some people to discover the hidden intentions of an attacker. These messages look real and attempt to get users to reveal their personal information.

3.       PASSWORD ATTACK

In order to decrypt a password for unsolicited use, hackers can use cracking programs. This is carried out by recovering passwords from data stored in or transported from a computer system. These types of attacks are executed to get access to bank information of an individual and siphon off cash.

4.       DISTRIBUTED DENIAL OF SERVICE (DDOS) ATTACK

Most common way to achieve a DOS attack is DDOS. This involves the attacker using multiple computers to send the traffic or data that overloads the system of a user. In many cases a person does not even realize that his or her computer has been hacked and is contributing to the DOS attack.

5.       MAN IN THE MIDDLE ATTACK

By impersonating the end points in an online information exchange the Man in the Middle attack can obtain information from the end user he or she is communicating with.
For e.g.: If someone is banking/shopping online, the man in the middle would communicate with the user by impersonating the bank/shopping website and would communicate with the bank/shopping website by impersonating the user.
This way he would receive all the information transferred between both parties which includes personal information and bank account details.

6.       SQL INJECTION ATTACK

This is an injection attack where the hacker uses malicious SQL statements to siphon off critical information from a web application’s database server. SQL injection vulnerability affects any website or web application that makes use of an SQL-based database. By leveraging the SQL injection vulnerability, an attacker can use it to bypass a web application’s
authentication and authorization mechanisms (login ids and passwords) and retrieve the contents of an entire database. It can also be used to add, modify and delete records in a database, affecting the data integrity.

7.       MALVERTISING ATTACK

These are criminally controlled advertisements which intentionally infect people and businesses and are often those which one uses as a part of their everyday internet usage. While the technology being used in the background is very advanced, the way it presents to the person being infected is simple. Without a user’s knowledge, a tiny piece of code hidden deep in the advertisement redirects the computer to some criminal servers where the malware injection takes place and the user is infected.

8.       ROGUE SOFTWARE ATTACK

It is a form of harmful software or scareware and internet fraud that deceives users into accepting that there is an infection on their computer and manipulates them into paying money for a fake malware removal tool. Some of the notifications include ads offering free or trial versions of security programs, expensive updates and pop-ups warning that the computer is infected with the virus. Now by clicking on the program, these links redirect to a landing page which claims that the machine is infected and encourage the person, a free trial of the rogue security program. Once the scareware is installed, it can steal all the information, slow down the computer, corrupt files, and even prevent the user from visiting legitimate security software sites.
The security of both small and big businesses is being compromised and organizations as well as the individuals have tracked down ways to curb the digital assaults using a variety of security measures. The Government too has felt triggered and is coming up with various laws and regulations to ensure cyber-attacks could be diminished. Awareness of users, customers, employees, enterprises regarding the importance of cybersecurity, together with the realization of extent of damages caused by the cybercrimes would go a long way in restraining the evils of internet usage.
Though there are several corrective measures available to treat the damage caused by the threats, it is always better to be cautious and implement methods that proactively analyze the environment and help listing down plans in order to resist the threats to even occur in your organization.
 implementation of ISO 27001 or ISO 27701 to check the status of present security vulnerabilities in your organization and to take steps accordingly. These standards talk about how critical business information as well as Personally Identifiable Information could be adequately protected. There is a detailed article present on this topic on our website.
 
https://www.consultantsfactory.com/article/risk-assessment
Link: How to Conduct Risk Assessment in an Organization?
To provide more clarity on the above-mentioned threats we will discuss these in details in our upcoming articles