Cyberattacks compromise valuable information and company assets, put customers at risk, and damage business reputation. Large enterprises and organizations are especially attractive targets for criminals because their computer systems contain a huge amount of information. Let’s take a look at the most popular types of cyberattacks and ways to protect against them.
Phishing remains one of the most popular types of cyberattacks. By sending emails on behalf of well-known brands, cybercriminals trick users into providing account passwords, financial information, and other valuable data. In the light of recent events, newsletters on the topic of coronavirus are gaining popularity.
To protect against phishing attacks, it is recommended that companies use email filtering tools.EasyDMARC tools prevent cybercriminals from sending fraudulent emails to your business partners, employees, and customers from your addresses. SPF record check tool will be helpful in this issue. The tool will protect your email domain, thus enforcing powerful and effective protection from phishing attacks.
Another type of attack that continues to threaten companies is the compromised corporate email (BEC) attack. Hackers posing as members of the company’s management or its counterparties send letters to employees with access to finance. The goal of the attackers is to convince the victim to transfer funds to a supposedly legitimate bank account that actually belongs to the criminals.
So it is very important to ensure that corporate email is properly protected, use filtering tools, and keep employees informed. It also makes sense to use special protection tools that can calculate emails that fall into the risk group by analyzing relationships, communication patterns and unique features inherent in the sender and recipient.
Ransomware continues to be one of the top cyber threats. After infection, valuable information on the victim’s computer is encrypted, and in order to restore access, it is proposed to pay a ransom, often in cryptocurrency.
To protect against such attacks, in addition to training employees, it is recommended to use special programs. For example, you can try to decode information encrypted by ransomware using tools that are freely available on the Internet.
Password-based attacks owe their success to people using the same password for all sites and services because a security breach in one site opens the door for other resources to be hacked. As a result, users who use the same passwords for personal and work accounts put their companies at risk.
Many organizations require employees to use more complex passwords and change them more often, but this does not stop employees from using the same passwords.
An option to protect against this type of threat is to use authentication methods that do not imply entering a password.
DDoS attacks continue to pose a threat to internet sites. A successful denial of service attack can slow down your site or crash it entirely. Companies can face three types of DDoS attacks:
Volumetric attack, loading network bandwidth;
An application-layer attack directed at the top layer of the OSI network. In most cases, these are attacks against HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, or SMTP;
Protocol Attack – Focuses on corrupting connection tables.
The way to eliminate the consequences of DDoS attacks is related to their type. In case of a bulk attack, it is recommended to increase the throughput of the system; in case of protocol or application layer attacks, it is necessary to blacklist the IP addresses involved in the attack.
As more internet-connected devices emerge in our homes and offices, IoT attacks are on the rise. The number of cyberattacks on IoT devices increased by 300% in 2020. Typically, such devices use default credentials, making them an excellent target for unauthorized access and infection.
To defend against IoT attacks, companies are encouraged to use network segmentation and firewalling, and regularly update and debug IoT devices.
Just as cybersecurity professionals use artificial intelligence to detect and prevent cyberattacks, criminals are beginning to use it to launch more effective threats.
An AI-based attack may not be immediately successful, but its adaptability will ensure that hackers succeed in the next attempt.
While such attacks are not very common, however, the beginning has already been made, and most likely, they will develop on a larger scale and faster. Security professionals need to learn more about these attacks in order to design and implement effective defenses.