Cyberattacks are serious business threats that can lead to financial implications, catastrophic data loss and breaches, disruption of operations, damage to a company’s reputation, and legal and regulatory penalties. They are perpetrated by a variety of threat actors, including hackers, criminals, terrorists, and competitors.
Viruses, worms, trojans, spyware and malware are common cyberattacks that target computer systems to steal information or cause other malicious activities. They can be used to extort money, or for other reasons such as to spy on an organization.
Malicious intent is a leading contributor to cybersecurity threats, with hacker groups and criminals seeking financial gain through stealing money or valuable corporate data. They may also seek revenge, improve their reputation in the hacker community, or to advance a political agenda.
Many cyberattacks are the result of human error, such as clicking on phishing links or responding to fake security alerts. To prevent such attacks, companies should train employees on best practices and the importance of reporting suspicious activity to IT and the cyber security team.
Certain types of cyberattacks, such as distributed denial of service (DDoS) and ransomware, directly affect an organization’s system and network availability, which causes productivity losses and customer dissatisfaction. To protect against these threats, businesses must implement strategies such as traffic filtering and rate limiting to detect and block malicious traffic before it can reach critical infrastructure. In addition, they should deploy man-in-the-middle attack prevention techniques to ensure that attackers cannot eavesdrop or modify data.