Types of cyberattacks that you should know in advance

There were just too many data breaches out there that could have been easily prevented.

Companies simply had to know what breaches existed in the market, their characteristics, and how to protect against them.

In other words, you must first know the enemy to defeat it.

So here are the top 3 types of cyberattacks that you should now be familiar with, so you can start preparing before it hits your business.

Last year, around 30% of all data breaches involved social engineering techniques. In short, social engineering is the psychological manipulation of a person to give up sensitive information.

According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 90% of them were phishing attacks and around 9% – pretexting attacks.

From all the types of cyberattacks, social engineering is so successful because it is easier for a criminal to deceive a human than to break into a protected system. Statistics reaffirm this – 43% of people admitted having made mistakes at work that compromised enterprise security.

Preparation strategy: educate your employees – to understand the potential risks, to recognize social engineering tactics, to correctly unpick a phishing email, to ask for help if they have doubts.

Ransomware

Ransomware is among the three most popular types of cyberattacks. And certainly one of the most frightening. Having suffered from this financially motivated cyberattack, in May 2021, Colonial Pipeline CEO confirmed having paid $4.4 million ransom.

Another more devastating loss – for the first time in history, the cyber attack ended with the person’s death in the German hospital in 2020. When the ransomware hit the hospital, a female patient needed critical care. Yet, because of the cyberattack, some crucial systems got disabled. Worst, hackers exploited private network software vulnerabilities that the hospital knew but ignored.

Preparation strategy: ensure all your networks, software, hardware, and systems are updated. All programs that you use in older versions (for instance, a program designed for Windows 7 on Windows 10 laptop) pose security risks. Assign or hire responsible people, so system updates and security become a prioritized task.

Attacks on cloud computing

Attacks on cloud services are directly linked to the types of cyberattacks that spiked rapidly following COVID-19. As the global enterprise use of cloud computing grew by 50%, the number of attacks increased accordingly.

While migration to the cloud allows fast scalability and high efficiency in lower prices, in 2020, it increased the average cost of a data breach by $267,469. This poses additional risks to remotely working employees and security while accessing enterprise systems and data.

Preparation strategy: implement secure gateways to access cloud-based systems. For that, use a cloud access security broker (CASB), introduce mandatory Two-factor Authentication methods.

Make sure to check your own company preparedness regarding these three types of cyberattacks. The world is slowly entering the post-pandemic landscape where remote work will continue to dictate cybersecurity threats.

To be prepared, make sure your security teams update systems on time, identify and solve vulnerabilities before hackers would. Most importantly, communicate the policies to the entire staff – so employees are always vigilant and ready to respond.