Cyberwarfare is the next warfare this modern world must fight against. Gone are the days when battles were fought using tanks and ammunition. Whether you happen to be military personnel, a government officer, or just a businessman having e-commerce or commercial business, it is necessary to know the cyber securities you are exposed to, just like you would be careful when walking along the dark alley.
Cyber threats aren’t just consumer-oriented. There’s more to cyber threats than identity theft and phishing. For example, software supply chain attacks are when malicious code infiltrates the vendor’s network. One way companies prevent this from happening is by using a vulnerability scanning tool to scan packages and ensure software isn’t in a compromisable position.
But there are many types of cyber threats to pay attention to. In this post, we will be seeing the top security threat, software systems are vulnerable to in this 2022 year.
Ransomware
I have put it above since this is one of the deadliest attacks any organization may have to face. Ransomware is like the old kidnap and ransom strategy. Just like someone could kidnap your family member and demand ransom for the release, a computer hacker can hack into your system, encrypt every folder on the drive, and then demand ransom for decryption.
This ransom is normally demanded through bitcoin to conceal the identity of the hacker. Ransomware requires some computer program to infect your machine and gain control. Such a program can be introduced in your machine through email attachments, attaching infected USB or other peripherals, or downloading from compromised websites.
Fortunately, to prevent being the victim of ransomware, the first thing you got to do is to have regular backups.
Insider Threats
Insider threats are when your authorized users turn against you. Suppose you have employees who can see your financial data. They can easily turn against you and bring loss by knowing, stealing, or misusing the access or information, provided to them for their job.
You cannot get away without granting the privileges to employees necessary for their jobs. What you can do is to know what privileges you are granting them and where to restrict them. You should limit employees’ access to only the specifics they need to get their job done. Contractors and freelancers should be given minimal access.
If the data is financial or sensitive, make sure you enable two-factor authentication. You should also enable logs to check how and where your information is being used.
Botnets
In this type of attack, a cybercriminal sends bots to search for potentially vulnerable devices. Once these devices have been found, they are infected through remotely controlled malware. The target is to infect as many devices as possible, using bots and then using them for their purposes. Devices that are hacked, can be used to send fake email campaigns, engage in fraud campaigns, and much more.
To fight back make sure you are aware of the incoming and outgoing traffic in your machine. You have to keep your system up to date and install the latest antivirus/malware. Further, since these bots make use of the internet, make sure you have firewall protection and rules in place to limit/restrict the network traffic.
Social Manipulation
Social manipulation is the next threat that is getting increasingly popular in 2022. Unfortunately, you cannot combat it using any anti-virus tool. With the advent and propagation of social media sites, we have entered an era where it is very easy to spread fake news and lies.
We categorize it in cyber security because it leverages the power of social media to spread the poison. To combat social manipulation, you do not need to install any antivirus, rather, you have to fight back at the information level.
Phishing
Phishing is a common attack that occurs because you authorize malicious users of breaching your security. A phishing attacker conceals himself behind the curtains of legitimate users to divert you in sharing your credentials, login information, financial details, and so on.
For example, you might get an email that has familiar look and feel, good, exciting messages, conveying to you that you have won a lottery at some known company. It becomes hard to identify that the sender is a disguised attacker because the message has been crafted that way to make you feel comfortable. As a result, you share the information signing your death certificate.
The only remedy to avoid being phished is to control your feelings and think before you leap. Check who is the sender of the email and if you don’t recognize the email address, don’t take any action!
DDoS Attacks
Every server has a limit of requests it can handle. If the number of these incoming requests significantly increases beyond the threshold level, the server becomes inoperable since crashes. This is the idea behind the DDoS attack. DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service. In a DDoS attack, a target server is selected. Next hackers send a stream of requests to this target.
Once the requests exceed beyond the acceptable level, the server ceases to provide service even to genuine users. Crashing servers can impact the functionality of a business and can bring huge financial losses. In Distributed attacks, multiple machines attack a single machine.
To prevent DDoS attacks, make sure you are using DDoS protection software. Again since the attack is coming from the network, make sure you are viewing the network for potential threats. Implement firewalls and finally raise the capacity of the servers to handle increased incoming traffic.
