Cyber Attacks – What your business needs to know?
In today’s world, technology has become a core aspect of our lives. Think about it, you can’t interact with your friends without poking them on Facebook or texting them. Sending emails or using tools such as Base camp as the primary form of communication in the office has become norm and we’re not any wiser.
If we want to travel we simply go to the best travel site that has the best deals and we’re all set. Even our financial information is now easily accessible on an app.
The question “what was life like before Facebook?” is a common one as we no longer can understand how we made it before Facebook came into the picture.
Even though technology has played a role in making our lives easier, all this has come at a very heavy price.
Like all artificial things technology is not infallible. It has its drawbacks.
Since so much valuable data is stored electronically nowadays, hackers work hard day and night trying to come up with ways to find vulnerabilities in systems that act as information repositories.
There are a number of ways to execute a cyber-attack. Since each attack is different in nature and scope, various solutions are required to avoid and neutralize the threat.
Rogue Software
This refers to deceptive software that promises to keep your system secured all the while undermining it. Usually it’ll be promoted as being legitimate and very necessary.
Hackers devise ingenious means to introduce rogue software. Basically, as you’re surfing a website a pop-up will alert you that your system is insecure and that you need to download their software in order to run a complete diagnostics test in order to determine if there are more issues that need to be solved. The software also makes claims of how it will help patch up your system after running the diagnostic test.
Unfortunately, after agreeing to download the software it infects your computer with malicious code.
The best way to avoid this sort of scenario is by ensuring that you download all of your security software from reputable websites. If you already haven’t downloaded an antivirus software on your computer ensure that you do so stat.
Malvertising
The name might sound funny however, there’s really nothing funny with having your computer get infected with malicious code right after clicking on an advert.
Pernicious code spread in this way is distributed to various websites by taking advantage of ad networks. Just like with ordinary ads the malicious ads are triggered by specific keywords meaning that it’s possible for the hackers to target a particular demographic with precision.
Usually, these ads will promote offers that just sound too good to be true. For instance, they’ll tell you that you hit the lottery and won the latest iPhone despite the fact that you haven’t entered any competition or tried your hand with the lottery.
The best way to avoid this is by keeping alert and not falling for these blatant cons. We cannot emphasize enough that an up-to-date security software is your best defense against such threats.
Drive-By Downloads
This is a very clever way of infecting computers that is popular among hackers. Basically, how it works is that a legitimate website will get infected with malicious code.
Once you visit the website the malicious code is downloaded to your computer. From that point on the code will try and contact a server that has the rest of the malicious code and download it to your computer.
Of course, all of this will be happening in the background and you won’t be aware.
The best way to safeguard your operating system is by ensuring that it is frequently updated.
You should also try and reduce the number of add-ons on your browser as they easily get infected by Drive-By downloads.
Man in the Middle
In this kind of attack the hacker takes on the role of an intermediary where they might impersonate you when dealing with a third party say for instance a financial institution.
Or, they might impersonate a third party or a third party’s representative when dealing with you.
The objective of this attack is to gain sensitive information from either you or a third party that you’re familiar with.
The “man in the middle” will take advantage of a wireless access point that’s not encrypted to intercept communication.
The best solution to preventing this is by using encrypted access points. That means when using a website, you should ensure that the URL starts off as HTTPS as not HTTP. The “S” denotes that the site is secure.
DoS Attacks
This kind of attack uses complicated techniques to disrupt service. DoS stands for Denial of Service. Basically, the hacker will overwhelm a website’s server with numerous requests. By doing this the website effectively shuts down.
This could be used to shut down an ecommerce site.
The best way to prevent a DoS attack from taking place is by regularly monitoring your website’s traffic for unusual spikes in traffic.
You also need to be vigilant since sometimes your site’s server might be unplugged from the internet hence taking your site offline.
Unfortunately, cyber threats are ever evolving so you need to keep alert to new types of threats as well as their solutions in order to safeguard your interests in cyberspace.
Author Bio: Over the many years we’ve been in operation, Tech Launch has built a solid reputation in the web development and cyber security space. We are regular contributors to technology blogs.
