4 Common Cybersecurity Threats Faced By Businesses Today

Businesses of all sizes can fall victim to cyberattacks. Cybercriminals are more determined than ever and the range of tactics they use is always expanding. Here are 4 common cyberattacks and how they can be avoided.

Malicious Phishing Links

A phishing email is an email that is sent with the intention of tricking the recipient into handing over personal data or exposing themselves to a malicious website. Phishing emails are designed to look like legitimate emails, often from a sender that the receiver would be expecting to receive a message from. Phishing emails are very effective, especially against those who are not aware of their existence. While some phishing emails are rudimentary and rely entirely upon the recipient not being very tech-savvy, a large number are also capable of fooling even those who are aware of phishing attacks.
You can reduce the effectiveness of phishing attacks by encouraging your employees not to share personal information over email, and not to click any links or attachments that they are not expecting or do not recognise.
One of the biggest problems with a phishing attack is that victims often don't know that anything has happened. While they may have inadvertently given away personal information or let a virus onto the network, there are often no immediate signs of foul play.

Insecure Passwords

Insecure passwords are a big problem for many businesses, but they are a much more serious problem now that GDPR has been introduced. If an attacker is able to gain access to your customer database because of a lapse in your security, then you may be liable under GDPR.
Some businesses, such as providers of Payday Loans handle a significant amount of personal and financial information about their customers. If this data falls into the wrong hands, then the impact on a business's reputation will be profound. It is therefore vital that at the very minimum you are encouraging all of your workers to follow best password practices.

Social Engineering

Modern digital cybersecurity systems are incredibly robust and very difficult to defeat. As a result, it is often easier to undermine the security of the people that operate that system rather than the system itself. Social engineering attacks often don't involve a computer at all and will involve an attacker using various social tricks in order to convince an unwitting employee to do what they want.
If an employee does not fully understand the security systems you have in place, then they can undermine them fatally without even realising it. It is important that you educate your workers about the most common forms of social engineering.

DDoS Attacks

Distributed denial of service attacks has become a favourite amongst both online mischief-makers and hacking collectives. A DDoS attack involves having a large number of devices all connect to the same point at the same time, the intention being to overwhelm the target network. As rudimentary as this attack vector is, it has also proven to be a consistently effective way of causing disruption to businesses.
You can hire professional DDoS protection services to keep your servers and networks safe from any attempted distributed denial of service attacks. This is a small price to pay when you consider the potential costs of your website being brought down.
Once you know what these threats are, you can prepare to defend against them. The more your workers understand about these threats, the more effective they will be at spotting them and avoiding them.