Types of Cyber Security Threats and How to Prevent from Them

The past few years are recorded as the highest reported cybercrimes, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

Not only this but cyber crimes are increased by 300%. This rapid increase is a clear threat for internet users, companies, and organizations.

With the evolution of the internet, the dependency has also increased, and the crime rate and fraud rate have emerged too.

But why the rate is increasing day by day?

The motives behind this are many. We cannot point to a particular aspect, but yes, money is one of the reasons behind many cases.

Cyber attackers can hack the system and can take severe actions to loot you.

These attackers are not only a threat to the corporations but also the target on individual’s systems to access the personal information which may help them for the further planned crimes under cyber security threats.

What is a Cyber Security Threat?

The cyber threat can be referred to as any possibility of the malicious act that aims to access personal information, damage files, access unauthorized access, steal data, or disrupt digital life in general.

The attackers can be hacktivists, corporate spies, terrorist groups, hostile nation-states, and more. The person can be from the organization itself who knows some confidential data of the company.

The attackers can use the corporate person to gain some personal information about the corporate to aim correctly. These crime intentions are not always for gaining important data but also to destroy the sources which could be a huge loss for the organization.

Types of Cyber Security Attacks

1.Malware

The name consists of two words, malicious and software. Now you can easily understand what it is.

Malware is referred to any malicious software which is intentionally designed to destroy the data or to cause damage to the computer, server, client, or any other network.

Do you know how it is activated in your system?

It is generally activated when an operator knowingly or unknowingly clicks on any malicious attachments or links and this causes the automatic installation of the software into the system.

Such as viruses, worms, ransomware, and spyware.

If any of these wares are installed in your system, they can cause:

• Blocking the access to key-network component
• Installation of numerous threatful software
• Access complete data and can transmit or transfer to the hard disk.
• Damage the system internally to lose all the data

We know, these things are stressful for any person but all we need is to keep a check on the activities on your or your organization’s system.

How you can check, whether your system is attacked by any suspicious software or not?

How to know, if the system is attacked by any malware or not?

There are many aspects through which you can check something is going wrong with the computer. We have listed the most experienced ways to check the OS below. These are the tips to prevent malware.

If your system is attacked by malware then,

• Your system will slow down. One of the major effects of software attacks is the slowdown of the operating system (OS). It can include the complete process from system navigation to opening the windows, apps, surfing of the internet, and many more.
• You can experience unexpected pop-up ads at any period. These ads are mostly regardless of your choice and interests with random topics and subject coverage. These sorts of ads are categorized as adware which itself contains malicious software.
• You can have some data loss or any mysterious loss of disk spaces, this occurs due to a category of dangerous ware which is termed as bundleware.
• Your system will start crashing all of sudden and this can happen multiple numbers of times. This can come as a freeze of the system as well.

2. Emotet

Emotet is a Trojan that is primarily spread through spammed emails and is thus also termed as malspam. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has described this emotet as a type of malware which is the “advanced modular banking Trojan”.

In addition to it, the emotet is continuing to be the most costly and destructive malware out there.

How to protect your system from emotet?

Below mentioned are the tips to protect from emotet software. Let’s know about the prevention of your system from this dangerous ware.

• Keep your endpoint and computer with the latest patches of Microsoft.
• Keep a check on what are you installing and downloading on your operating system. Don’t download any kind of suspicious files or attachments before confirming. Emotet cannot get into your system if you avoid such actions and click on dangerous links.
• Practice using two-step authentication or two-step verification, this is one of the best practices which can save you from future criminal actions. Always educate your employees, system operators on creating a strong password and keep changing it on a regular time.

3. Denial of Service

A denial of service (DoS) is a category of a cyber attack that overflows your computer or network so that it can’t respond to important requests. A distributed DoS does the same action, but this attack originates from a particular computer network.

Cyber attackers generally use an overflowed attack to discard and disrupt the two-way process which is also known as the ‘handshake process’ and further carry out a DoS.

Several other techniques can be used for the same act, and some cyber attackers also use the time when a network is disabled to launch other attacks.

A botnet is one of the types of DoS in which n number of systems can get infected with malware and can be easily controlled by a hacker.

Botnets are also termed zombie systems that target and overwhelm a target’s processing capabilities.

Also, these Botnets are often operated from different geographic locations which are very hard to trace.

How to protect the system from Denial of Services?

• It is very necessary to monitor the network. The more you know and check about how the normal or organic inbound traffic looks like, the quicker you will identify any unethical actions.
• Protect your operating systems or endpoints.
• Streamline incident response can play a vital role by honing the incident response can help you a lot for your security team.

4. Man in the Middle

The Man in the Middle is exactly what it sounds like. It can occur when a person takes part between or insert himself in a transaction where two parties are included. The attacker uses one of the harmful methods to secretly share some personal and confidential information with the attackers.

How to prevent from Man in the Middle Attack (MitM)

Before jumping into the points, here is an important note for you.

Always, have a right and trusted IT partner to ensure all of the security policies related to the organization. There is nothing like the only large business companies can suffer these situations; the attackers can also aim at small scale businesses.

It is always better to prevent yourself from such activities.

• You should avoid using public networks for completing your confidential works and tasks.
• Always implement Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), to access a secure connection from your business to the applications.
• Prioritize usage of web browsers that are fully updated and secured for work purposes.
• One of the best practices is to create a separate sort of access to wifi for guests, employees, and the head of the organization.

5. Phishing

Phishing attackers use fake communications, such as spam email or simply that electronic mail, to trap the user if an individual opens it.

These emails generally ask for some credentials with some fake reasons such as account deactivation, card blockage, back account blocking, or card expiration. And they ask for providing credit card numbers.

These scams are one of the most common ways to trick people. This is completely similar to the fraud phone calls where attackers ask for the account numbers and so. With time, the attackers also navigated from phone calls to emails.

How to prevent your System from Phishing Attacks?

Here are some tips to prevent phishing.

• Educate yourself to spot these attacks and identify them. Since these attackers find multiple ways and new traps to attack users but there are a few commonalities that you can easily point out after researching more about it.
• Never click on the links before confirming that this is organic or real mail without any wrong intentions.
• Avoid providing your information to any unauthorized person or software as well.
• As we discussed before, keep rotating your password now and then, this will not allow anyone to track and decode your password and this will keep things secured.

By applying these points in your mind will prevent you from dangerous situations.

Are you pondering what if you become the prey of cyber attackers even after these steps?

Well, there is very little chance of it.

But, don’t worry. We are providing an answer to this query.

All you need to do is just peep in here for cyber security solutions.

Wrapping Words

We hope this information has helped you in understanding a few of the malicious software. And from this article, the only thing that is conquered: the more you keep checking on your system updates, activities, and performances, the safer will be the output at your end from cyber security threats.

Also, don’t forget to share this piece of information with your contacts.