Introduction
In this age of digital transformation, the biggest challenge Organizations face comes from cyber-threats. As we are making a shift towards the cloud, our organisational data is getting vulnerable to the constant cyber-threats. The cyber-attacks aren’t limited to large organizations as they were a couple of years ago. Nowadays even small organizations are also getting hit by the cyber-attacks.
The purpose of this blog is to understand the most dangerous cyber-threats so we can develop a concrete strategy to prevent the data loss. The table below demonstrates the comparisons between the problems we faced in 2014 and the problems we are facing right now.
| 2014 | 2018 | |
| Organizations victimized by one or more successful cyber-attacks | 62% | 77% |
| Optimism for dodging a successful cyber attack in the coming year | 62% | 38% |
| IT security’s weakest links | Mobile devices Laptops / notebooks Social media | Containers Mobile devices Cloud infrastructure |
| IT security’s greatest inhibitors | Low-security awareness among employees | Lack of skilled IT security personnel |
| Greatest cyberthreat concerns | Malware Spear phishing | Malware Spear phishing |
| Hottest network security technology planned for acquisition | Next-generation firewall (NGFW) | Advanced malware analysis |
| Hottest endpoint security technology planned for acquisition | Advanced malware analysis | Containerization / micro-virtualization |
| Change in next year’s IT security budget | No change | Increase 5-9% |
Source: KnowledgeNile
Top Five Cyber-Threats
Ransomware
Ransomware has been the biggest threats for the last five-odd years, and they are still expected to be the top cyber-threat. This has been causing the most damage and considered as the most dangerous threat amongst the types of cyber-threats.
Ransomware is a type of software which encrypts the data until the asked ransom is paid. Most of the ransomware is sent through the email attachments, and once you open the email, the virus downloads itself and starts corrupting the files on the computer.
Possible Remedies:
As they say, prevention is better than cure, the best way forward for preventing the ransomware is to identifying the ransomware with the effective protective measures.
Educating your staff by letting them know the type of emails that generally contain such viruses and asking them not to open them or asking them not to download the attachments from the unknown sources.
Phishing
Phishing is generally an attempt to gain the personal data by posing as a known authority; normally an online service or a bank. Spear phishing has caused tremendous data loss for many organizations. The main reason behind this is they seem to be completely authentic and genuine making it more difficult to understand the difference.
Possible Remedies:
Ask your employees not to share the sensitive information as no company will ask for your personal data for official use. Also implement an effective firewall, spam filters to prevent them from falling into the inbox.
Data Loss
The data loss has been one of the prominent factors for many organizations. With the concepts like BYOD or the use of unknown sources and the use of different devices cause the data loss.
Possible Remedies:
The data loss prevention methods have been the top priority of many of the security experts. An effective way is to secure the end-points of the devices being used.
Hacking
Most of the hackers have been breaching the firewalls and hacking the website and gaining access to the confidential data of the organizations. In addition to that; with the technological advancements, the hackers now deploy the bots to do the hacking on their behalf.
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