Cyber security refers to the preventative techniques used to protect IT infrastructure assets and data of an organization or individual, from being attacked, stolen or accessed illegally. It includes protecting hardware and software from becoming compromised to internal or external cyber-attacks.
No Business is too small to be immune from cyber-attacks. On an average a site is attacked 50 times per day, and improper security measures can increase the threat.To effectively protect your business, it is important to be aware of the common widespread cyber security threats and take appropriate measures to combat such threats.
Website defacement is an attack on a website that changes the visual appearance of the site or a webpage and inserts the hacker’s message. In short, it is vandalism of a website or a criminal drawing of graffiti.
These are non-targeted automated attacks that attempt to compromise computer’s operating system which has known security vulnerability especially in windows. These attacks occur if ALL necessary patches are not installed.
By injecting irrelevant keywords, links, spam comments etc into a website, SEO spam forces the site to rank away from the specific keywords given by a business, which may result in considerable loss of traffic.
A malicious redirect occurs when visitors land on a site and are sent to another site containing malicious content due to embedded JavaScript code. WordPress hacked redirect, is becoming quite widespread redirecting visitors to adult & other malicious pages.
A DDoS attack occurs when a website’s server is maliciously overloaded by “bogus” traffic from attacker-controlled computers, called a botnet. This causes slow website loading times and crashed servers, which can be devastating to your bottom line but a boon to your competitors.
Ransomware is a type of malware that prevents users from accessing their system or personal files and demands ransom payment in order to resume access. Many attacks don’t have to be as vicious as WannaCry or NotPetia to take an entire SME down due to the financial strain. Ransomware was the fastest growing threat in cyber security.
Employees can surf non-business-related sites using the company’s electronic devices which can affect company network with bot clients, Trojans, spyware, and different kinds of malware. The sites that spread the most malware are
a) Celebrity fan sites
b) Casual gaming sites
c) Adult sites and online social networks
Since SMEs have fewer employees, they tend to allocate a lot of control over assets to a single individual. This gives one employee the ability to do more harm as an insider. These insider attacks can be unauthorized extraction, manipulation, destruction of assets and data, and unauthorized use of third-party software which may contain harmful viruses.
While many SMEs are concerned about cyber-attacks, more than half are not allocating enough in their budgets to risk mitigation. They also lack proper back-up and recovery strategy to pick up from an attack easily. An effective pro-active defense must include regular IT Security Audits and incorporate offensive countermeasures to outsmart an adversary.
It is easy to change or erase data accidentally. For instance, a staff member could delete a crucial list of customers by mistake.
Anyone with access to your data could copy or delete it. For instance, a disgruntled employee could sell your customer database to a competitor. Controlling access to users is a key to reducing this risk.
Most cyber-attacks happen because of an internal blunder.
The biggest benefit to holding a session on security awareness is to build better security from within. Knowing your employees are prepared and acting with a focus on data security gives you unmatched peace of mind and the confidence that your business is doing everything possible to prevent data breaches and possible external attacks.
Cyber Security awareness training is a formal process for educating employees about computer security. A good security awareness program should be organized to educate your employees about the corporate policies and procedures within the IT space. The main focus is to empower your employees on the hassles of being complacent to the threats lingering out there.