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According to Stanford, in 2020, “the World Economic Forum rated cyber attacks as one of the top five risks facing businesses and governments.” They have a 0.05% detection rate in the United States of America and will cost over 10 trillion by 2025.
Cyber attacks can occur to any organization, whether small or large and at any time. Therefore, you must differentiate between the various cyberattacks to recognize key vulnerabilities and the correct response.
Cyber attacks are categorized as either passive or active and can occur from inside or outside your company. By identifying these attacks soon enough, your company can save financial resources and prevent illegal access to private data.
Here are six different types of cyberattacks and how you can prevent them.
1. Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS)
A DDoS is a form of cyberattack in which attackers flood your network with excess traffic that it can’t handle, causing your web pages to crash. This type of attack is often initiated from many devices and aimed at a particular target. Categories of DDoS attacks include:
SYN Flood: Intended to make a server unavailable for your site’s traffic by taking up all available server resources.
HTTP Flood: This attack is intended to overload a specific server with HTTP queries.
UDP Flood: Here, the cybercriminal aims at overloading ports with IP packets consisting of UDP datagrams.
The best way to prevent DDoS attacks and damage is by analyzing your web pages and identifying any susceptibilities they may have. Also, ensure you lay out a response plan in case of a DDoS attack. Make each person in your organization understand their role if such an attack occurs.
2. SQL Injection
This is a common cyber-attack where attackers add arbitrary SQL into a web-based application database query. The harmful SQL code initiates backend database alteration to gain access to personal data, including trade secrets, client details, and intellectual property.
There are three key SQL injection forms: inferential SQLi, in-band SQLi, and Out-of-band SQLi. Prevention methods for SQL injection attacks include using stored procedures, input validation, and parameterized queries.
3. Phishing
Phishing attacks occur when an attacker sends deceitful communications that appear to emanate from a trustworthy source, more preferably via email. Phishing is intended to get illegal access to sensitive data, including login details and credit card details, or at times install malware on a user’s device.
Today, phishing accounts for more cyber attacks due to its ease to undertake and effectiveness. Often, attackers leverage emotional messages that arouse fear, curiosity, and urgency to invoke victims to click on malicious links and attachments.
You can easily identify and prevent a phishing attack by examining hypertext links you receive in your email. Compare the destination URL link to see if it’s the same as that in the email. Additionally, avoid opening links with weird characters or abbreviations. Furthermore, you can use HTTPS (SSL) to safeguard against phishing attacks.
4. Malware
A malware attack occurs when a software discreetly gains access to a user’s device without being aware. Malware can infect a computer in various ways, such as pop-up windows that initiate malware download, opening malware-infected email attachments, or downloading software infected with malware. Ransomware is one of the most occurring types of malware attack that can infect your device.
You can prevent malware attacks by installing an up to date anti-virus software on your device. Such software scans your device to identify and clean any malware.
5. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Attack
This attack resembles the SQL injection attack. Nevertheless, cybercriminals use this attack to infect users visiting a website rather than aiming at the application itself. Based on the gravity of the attack, visitors’ accounts can be compromised, and the attacker can initiate Trojan horse programs.
The most effective way to prevent XSS attacks is by scanning your web pages or web-based apps consistently in the code.
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6. Drive-by Attack
In this attack, attackers often identify vulnerable websites to insert a malicious script into HTTP or PHP code on some web pages. The script can install malware, such as spyware, trojan, virus, etc., onto the user’s device who accesses the website.
You can prevent this attack by installing protective software and avoiding clicking suspicious URLs coming from sources you don’t know.
Conclusion
Companies, including yours, need to invest in cyber security strategies to safeguard company resources and avoid losses. Therefore, you should adopt the preventative measures highlighted in this post to minimize the chances of being attacked or reduce the damage if your company is attacked.
