The threat of cyberattacks grows each year.
Attacks are becoming more complex and sophisticated.
For businesses, cybersecurity should now be an intrinsic part of operations.
Falling victim to cyberattacks can have dire consequences.
Downtime, loss of intellectual property, and reputation damage can all have significant financial costs.
Even governments arent sympathetic to companies that get breached due to lax security.
Data protection regulations can levy significant fines on companies that fail to protect customer data.
Cyberattacks have been a hot topic over the past years.
Whats in store for us in 2019?
Its generally believed that getting attacked is a matter of when and not if.
Attackers now use automation to carry out their attempts.
Any web link or gadget that connects to the internet has a high chance of being attacked.
By adding more devices and endpoints to their networks, businesses essentially widen their attack surface.
Hackers prey on the weakest link to access devices.
What kinds of threats can we expect?
Over the past years, the biggest attacks involved ransomware, data breaches, and DDoS attacks.
Were likely to see more of the same.
Attackers now have control over botnets that could continuously carry out these attacks.
Since users tend to reuse passwords, hackers can use this data to breach other systems.
Source:Troy Hunt
Social engineering methods are also tried-and-tested means for hackers to gain access to systems.
But we also have to be aware that attackers are evolving their methods.
They continue to seek ways to exploit the weak links in the security chain.
What are some of these new methods that attackers use?
Some hacker groups are even experimenting with artificial intelligence to help them get around conventional security measures.
IoT devices have also become popular targets.
Unfortunately, many of these cheap gadgets actually lack essential security features making them vulnerable to attacks.
Another emerging threat is extortion through data protection laws.
Attackers can threaten companies with data breaches or website defacement to make them non-compliant.
Failure to protect private information can result in hefty fines from government agencies.
Attackers are banking on this fear to compel companies to pay ransom in exchange for not getting hacked.
How can companies protect themselves?
There are a host of ways companies could secure their infrastructure from cyberattacks.
Installing or enabling antivirus and anti-malware software on each endpoint is a start but this isnt enough.
Improving internet security through firewalls prevents malicious traffic from reaching their networks.
We at Cloud Management Suite provide a platform to empower users with comprehensive IT management capabilities.
Administrators could easily manage any part of their infrastructure through the cloud.
Its also critical to have realtime security.
If critical updates are released, patches must be immediately deployed to ensure that affected systems are kept secure.
Why does security have to be realtime?
Attackers are constantly probing networks so mitigation and response measures should be running 24/7.
Attacks can happen in between scheduled updates and scans.
Attacks could be quite devastating.
I hope they do.
But this just goes to show how determined and malicious hackers are.
All this sounds worrying, should companies be afraid?
Companies should definitely be concerned.
Dealing with a cyberattack isnt easy and smaller operations may find it hard to recover should they fall victim.
But its also important not to be overcome by fear and panic.
Cybersecurity threats are part of our reality today.
Fortunately, there are a wide variety of tools that are now available to deal with most threats.
Cybersecurity also requires a concerted effort from everyone.
Companies should put security as a key part of their agenda and encourage vigilance and care from their members.
source: www.techworm.net
