6 kinds of cyber attacks threatening your business

6 kinds of cyber attacks threatening your business

When it comes to small businesses in the US, around 45% of them are targets of one of the cyber attacks I'll be going over below. Yeah, you read that right, I said 45% with is almost half of the businesses. Cyber security is no joke and you should be investing in it as soon as you can to protect and encrypt whatever you can so you don't lose your money, clients info or identity. They type of attacks that can happen online are growing every year because they are staying up with the current technology. You could say that the cyber attacks are evolving to stay alive and be on top of the food chain.

Now we have great cyber security system out there such as life lock and all the malware and spam detectors, but are they going to keep you 100% safe from everything? Below I'll go over some of the cyber attacks that I can think of off the top of my head and how to halt them as they happen

Types of Cyber Attacks

A Denial of Service attack a.k.a. DoS Attack
A DoS attack is when someone, or a group, is attacking a specific website or database in order to overload it and make it go offline. They will use thousands of computers to overload the servers with fake traffic in order to get it to shut down and essentially take the website offline as well. Regular security updates and having third party DDOS and DOS services integrated into your server can help prevent your website from going down because they will basically swat the fake traffic and send it to a dumpster which keeps your site online.



Internal Attacks
Small businesses may go through a lot of employees over time whether it's due to the employee finding a better job or the management firing people who don't do the job well enough. Some of the worst attacks are from within because the person already knows their way around the inside of your site or server. If you fire someone you need to make sure to delete/revoke their access in order to close off a potential internal attack because they become disgruntled.

Sometimes if you leave a window open for them to get in, their access info, they could upload what is called ransomware which basically will hold your website for ransom until you pay an amount specified by the person who uploaded it. You won't know who the person is because the ransomware masks everything. Usually you can't even track the account numbers if the money is sent overseas and back to the persons account.



Malware
This type of attack is well known even if you're not running your own business. Malware can be picked up like the common cold so if you don't have proper security in place you could be losing more than just access to your website. Antivirus software can create a nice blockade when it comes to malware, but you'll need to get a good one. Sometimes free antivirus systems are just wolves in sheep's clothing. You'll want to pay for your antivirus system just to be sure it's legitimate, but even then you'll want to look up reviews first

Be weary of unsolicited emails that come in and you don't know the sender because one click on a link could give a piece of malware access to your computer, which is never fun. You also need to avoid pop ups because just by clicking on these you could get a nasty bug on your computer. If you have some pretty good malware and spyware detection and quarantine systems in place then this will just be a hassle for a few moments while the software does it's job of halting the problem in it's path.



Password Attacks
When it comes to gaining access to your hosting, twitter account, bank account, etc. the easiest way an attacker can do this is by using variations of specific keywords in order to gain access. This is the main reason people will always tell you not to use your business name or personal name as a form of your password because it makes it much easier to gain access to your accounts.



There are 2 main types of password attacks, and they are as follows:

Brute Force Attack
A brute force attack is when the hacker or attacker is inputting everything manually because they have a list of common terms your business uses or possibly a list of employees names or pets. They will go one by one inputting whatever they can as long as it fits the formula and sometimes they get in. If you do what you're suppose to and change your passwords frequently, you can usually avoid this. Again, you'll need to use words that are not common or associated to your or your business in any way in order to decrease the chance of someone getting in that should not have access.


Key Logger Attack
Think of a scenario where someone, or a piece of software, can watch every keystroke you're making and save that to a database. A lot of hackers will use something called a key logger and it does just this. Imagine if you had a key logger installed on your laptop or desktop and it monitored everything you were doing. It would watch and mark down every key you pressed and the timing between every stoke of your finger to get a better understanding of which keys were being pressed when logging into specific websites. If you could write down every key pressed when someone was logging in, you essentially have their password. Now all you have to do is play some basic scrabble and figure it out

If you're the hacker then there is nothing to worry about if you're bad at scrabble. These key loggers will gladly spit out a list of every variation of a possible email and let you input them one by one doing a brute force attack. I've even heard of some of these key loggers going the extra mile and finding the right password by logging in and then marking down the correct one and sending it to the hacker when complete




In Conclusion:
There are many types of scary cyber attacks, but you can deter a lot of them with proper software or third party services in place to fight the attack as it happens. Logging into your computer only to see that your website has been overtaken by a hacker or enraged ex-employee is never a fun thing. Be prepared and set up proper defenses before anything could possibly happen



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Razzy