In 2021, cyber security is as important as ever. As much as the business and commerce has flourished in these years so are the threats to the businesses. Technology and communication has reached an all time high, but technology has some problems. It has to take on cyber crimes. With ever growing threats to businesses, having robust security solutions is absolutely essential.
Most of you must have heard about firms and organizations paying huge fines and or even going out of their business because of a simple hack to their systems.
What is a cyber attack or hack ?
A cyber attack is an assault launched by cyber criminals using one or more computers against a single or multiple computer network. In computers or computer networks, an attack is any attempt to expose, destroy, steal or gain information through unauthorized access or to make unauthorized use.
Consequences of Cyber Attack
A cyber attack can maliciously disable computers, steal data or use a breached computer as a launch point for other attacks.
Cyber criminals use a variety of methods to launch a cyber attack, including malware, phishing, ransomware and denial of service among other methods.
Common Examples of Cyber Security
Here are some examples of common cyber attacks:
- Identity theft, fraud, extortion
- Malware, phishing, spamming, spoofing, spyware, trojans and viruses
- Stolen hardware, such as laptops or mobile devices
- Denial-of-service and distributed denial-of-service attacks
- Breach of access
- Password sniffing
- System infiltration
- Website defacement
- Private and public Web browser exploits
- Instant messaging abuse
- Intellectual property (IP) theft or unauthorized access
How to protect your company?
With all of these many potential cyber attacks waiting in the wings, there is an immense need for cyber security.
Train your staff
One of the most efficient ways to protect your data from breach of privacy is to train your staff. They need to:
- Check links before checking them
- Check email addresses from the received email
- Use common sense before sending sensitive information
Links are often legitimate to an untrained eye and can easily fall into trap.
Keep your system and software fully update
If your system and software are not updated, it can leave weaknesses and Hackers exploit it to gain access to the network.
Patch management is also a smart idea to counteract this, keep your system strong and resilient because once the hackers are into your network,it is too late to take preventive action.
Install a Firewall
Putting your network behind a firewall is one of the most effective ways to defend your network from any cyber attack. Firewall protects your system and saves it from any malware before it does any damage to your system.
Backup your data
The purpose of the whole cyber security is to protect your data. Data is the most precious asset of any organization. A backup of data is extremely necessary to avoid serious downtimes and data losses.
In case of loss of data, data can be recovered from backup file.
Control Access to your systems
A very obvious threat to your data is the physical threat. Someone can simply walk into your office and plug a USB into your computer allowing access to your entire network or infect it.
It is necessary that you limit only authorized access to your network so that your data and system is protected.
Importance of Cyber Security
Fundamentally, cyber security is the backbone of technology, practice and process to protect systems, networks and programs.
It is a serious matter that cyber attacks are shaping in every form possible in order to stay one step ahead of the development in technology.
Rise of cyber crimes, growth of Internet of Things devices and bridge to security gap are the major reasons why cyber security is immensely important in the current age. Organizations are required to equip themselves to prepare for tight security measures and best cyber security solutions to look for vulnerabilities and to track their brand online!
