As the business world becomes increasingly digitised, the risk of cyber attacks and potentially costly data breaches become increasingly pronounced.
43 per cent of businesses identified cyber security breaches or attacks in 2022, with the average data breach costing £16.1k to correct.
There are further data complications created by GDPR and the pressing need to handle customer and client information with care.
In this article, we’re going to discuss the steps that your company can take to understand the most common cyber attacks and prevent these in the future.
What are the Most Common Cyber Attacks?
The chances are that you’re aware of the most common forms of cyber-attack, including the increasingly sophisticated process of phishing.
Phishing is a type of online fraud that usually involves cyber thieves sending malicious communications via email or text.
Within the body of the text, you’ll usually find a request for sensitive information (such as a password or your credit card details) or a link that looks to direct you to an external site, while the sender will masquerade as a bank, insurance provider or similarly trusted commercial partner.
Another common cyber threat is posed by ‘cracking’, which is a technique that’s used to break into computer software and company networks with the intent to steal customer data.
This is the virtual iteration of cracking a safe, as cyber thieves used advanced techniques to break into a secure digital device or program.
This is often confused with ‘hacking’, but this refers to the process of compromising digital devices in a bid to gain unauthorised access to data.
While crackers directly cause disruption and destabilise networks proactively, hackers are more inclined to seek out existing weak spots in network security protocols.
How to Prevent These Attacks
Despite occasional security vulnerabilities, nobody invites cyber-attacks or data breaches into their lives, so having an understanding of the most common attacks and obtaining legal advice for white-collar crimes is more important than ever before.
But what proactive steps can you take to prevent such attacks? Here are some ideas to keep in mind:
- #1. Educate Your Employees on the Cyber Threat: Knowledge and accountability are key weapons in the fight against data breaches, and not only among the senior leadership team. You should attempt to educate every single employee on the most common cyber threats and how to spot them while informing them on how to distinguish phishing emails from reputable correspondence. This helps to protect your business while making each employee accountable for their actions.
- #2. Install a VPN: A virtual private network (VPN) works by creating an encrypted tunnel between your device and a virtual server, making data and web traffic appear as indecipherable code to network hackers. This creates an additional layer of network security (especially when using public networks), so installing a VPN for remote workers and safeguarding their connections can stop data breaches before they occur.
- #3. Set Up a Robust Firewall: Not all data breaches are created equal, as some are considerably more complex than others. However, one of the most effective universal strategies is to install a robust firewall to protect your network, as this will block any brute force assaults from cyber thieves and typically prevent them from causing significant harm. This is a relatively simple step, but one that can go a long way to safeguarding your business.
