Doing business online is not safe. No matter what any antivirus or antimalware company might tell you, and whatever steps you might take to guard against potential problems, there is no one hundred percent safe way to do business online. We don’t mean to worry you with that statement, because no method of doing business is safe. Just as there’s always a risk that someone might break into your office if you keep all of your money or important information on site, there’s always a risk that someone will compromise your IT infrastructure and access information that way. Read below to know few Cybersecurity Threats to protect your Online business better.
The only way you can guard against the Cybersecurity Threats risks is by making yourself aware of the biggest problems out there at the moment and taking action to limit your exposure. While it might not be possible to make yourself totally safe and secure, there are ways you can make yourself safer and make yourself a more difficult target to attack for cybercriminals.
Many people – especially people who operate small businesses or don’t handle large amounts of cash or data – might wonder why a cybercriminal would bother to attack them. That mindset is based on a misunderstanding of how cybercriminals operate. To them, you’re just one spinning reel in an enormous playtech casino. Just like every online slots player knows that they’re not guaranteed to hit the jackpot on any spin, every cybercriminal knows that they’re not guaranteed to gain anything valuable from a cyber attack. They’re playing the odds. If you spend enough time and money at an online slots website, you’ll eventually win something. If a cybercriminal attacks enough computers and networks, they’ll eventually find something that makes their efforts worthwhile. It’s a numbers game, and we don’t want to see you become just another number in that game. That’s why we’ve identified the 5 biggest cybersecurity threats that exist online right now.
Remote Working
Due to circumstances beyond your control, you might be working from home right now. If you’re a business owner, you might have employees working from home. That presents a security risk. While it might be possible to manage and control your IT framework within an office, it gets a lot harder when you have staff at home working on their own devices. You don’t have control over their antivirus software or the things they either download from the internet or put into their computers via USB sticks or other media. You can’t stop them from accessing potentially dangerous websites. To alleviate this risk, your best option is to supply your employees with office-approved equipment and insist that they use this rather than their own hardware. It’s more expensive, but it’s still less expensive than a huge data breach might be.
Attacks That don’t use Downloads
Here in 2020, the average internet user is a lot more savvy and switched-on than the average internet user in 2010. We all understand that the majority of cyber attacks come from ‘bad’ downloads, and we know how to avoid them. We don’t open attachments in suspicious-looking emails. We don’t accept unexpected downloads when websites attempt to push them on us. Assuming that we’re staying safe by doing so, however, is foolish. You can still be attacked without downloading any files thanks to ‘fileless attacks.’ Instead of using a download, attackers exploit vulnerabilities that already exist within the software on your computer. The primary medium for this is websites that use Flash. Shellcode within Flash can be used to download and execute files without your input, and that can open up your whole system. Avoid this by turning Flash off by default in browsers. It’s a dead format anyway, and you should be suspicious of any website that still uses it.
Mobile Viruses And Exploits
You and your key staff probably use your mobile phones for work purposes. You might provide access to work emails through mobile phones, or even access to important files through cloud storage. This is a risk when employees use their own devices to access that information. It can still be a risk when you provide your employees with ‘work’ phones. You almost certainly have antivirus and antimalware software on your work computer. Can you say the same about your phone? It’s easier for hackers to install malware on phones than it is on computers because of the comparative lack of protection on phones, and you need to patch that vulnerability immediately.
Phishing
Even though the nature of cyber-attacks becomes more diverse, phishing remains the world’s most profitable exploit for hackers and scammers. Almost 80% of significant data breaches and cybercrimes carried out last year involved phishing. Hackers are getting better than ever before at cloning email addresses and making email correspondence look genuine. That makes it harder than ever to determine what’s safe to open and what should be left alone. A ‘better safe than sorry’ approach is the best way forward here. If you or your staff have any doubt whatsoever that an email isn’t what it appears to be, they should telephone the sender and verify that it’s genuine before opening anything.
The Internet Of Things
Almost every useful gadget these days is ‘smart.’ The televisions in your home might be ‘smart.’ You might have smart speakers, smart lights, smart fridges, or even smart water coolers. We use all of these devices for convenience, but from a technological standpoint, they’re still in their infancy. They don’t come with the same kind of security safeguards that your computers do. They’re not even as secure as your printers. A determined hacker doesn’t need to directly access your server in order to gain access or do damage. So long as they can access something on your network – even if it’s something as seemingly innocuous as a water cooler – they might potentially be able to communicate with the rest of your network from there and begin causing problems. Consider the things in your office that are online right now, and ask yourself if there’s a strong business case for them to stay online. If there isn’t, disconnect them. The fewer connections to the internet you have, the less vulnerable you are.
The nature of the dangers that face businesses online changes regularly and advice will always change alongside it. We’ll periodically come back to this topic and give you all the information you need about the latest Cybersecurity Threats. In the meantime, consider the five vulnerabilities we’ve identified above and ask yourself whether you’re doing enough to protect yourself from them.
Do you like the above Story related to Cybersecurity Threats? Share us.
