4 Online Threats to Your Business to Be Aware Of

Cybercrime has changed criminal activity. No longer are heists solely performed by rogues attempting to break into a building for money or jewelry.

Nowadays, business theft is likely to come in the form of a cyber attack, with a hacker attempting to gain access to their target’s funds or data via a cyber-portal, which they can often do with ease.

Sadly, malicious cyber-attacks are a genuine threat to companies of all sizes and in every industry. To ensure your business never becomes a cybercriminal’s latest victim, here are the four online threats to your business to be aware of.

1. Phishing Scams

Phishing scams are one of the most common data security issues many companies face, and they can grant a cybercriminal with access to:

• Usernames
• Account passwords
• Credit card information

Hackers will commonly pass themselves off as a legitimate source to fool their victims and encourage them to provide sensitive data.

The best defence against a phishing scam is cybersecurity training. Your employees often pose the biggest risk to your business when it comes to this hacking tactic, which is why you must educate your staff on the signs of a potential threat and introduce strict cybersecurity policies for them to follow.

2. Docker Exploitation

Many organizations have invested in container authorization tools to deploy their applications successfully.

While these tools are ultimately improving the working lives for many DevOps engineers, they could pose a severe cybersecurity risk if left vulnerable, as a hacker could remotely execute code on a server and gain full control of a production container cluster.

Thankfully, there are ways to detect and prevent Docker exploits with StackRox, as they will test the product against realistic vulnerabilities using algorithmic-based automatic anomaly detection, without the need to configure complex, unreliable rules.

3. Session Hijacking

As millions of online consumers communicate with companies on different servers located across the globe, cybercriminals can potentially listen to a conversation before stealing sensitive data. To do so, they might embark on SQL injections or man-in-the-middle attacks.

Businesses must, therefore, implement various measures to secure future communications and protect both their safety and their customers’ data.

For example, they could incorporate cryptographic protocols, such as Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) to create safe and secure communications between a company’s servers and their client web browsers.

4. Ransomware

Ransomware is a powerful type of malware that attempts to gain access to a computer, before locking out a user and demanding money in exchange for the recovery key to regain access to a network and data.

It is becoming a popular option with cybercriminals due to the invention of cryptocurrency, which can prevent law enforcement from tracking a payment.

The 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack is a prime example of the power of the malware, as it led to the infection of approximately 300,000 computers across the world in 150 countries, with the total damages reportedly reaching billions of dollars.