Is your business solely dependent on technology? If so, you must be concerned about protecting it from the issue of cyber attacks, especially when they have the potential to damage its functionality. According to a study, small businesses are mostly targeted of cyber attacks, as small companies accounted for 43% of cyber attacks and it is only 14% of them that are prepared to defend themselves. This implies that your business is at great risk and you need to have pro-active measures to protect your business.
With technology providing vast opportunities, businesses are regularly expanding their wings to online platform. The issue of Cyber attacks have also increased manifold and businesses seek for security system that can keep them up. Cybertech strategies can be of great help to them seeking to learn about different types of cyber attacks that can pose a threat. It is therefore important to understand the types of Cyber attack that can impact your business, and also the measures needed to deal with them.
Types of cyber attacks impacting businesses
Cyber attacks are of many types and the most important ones are identified as malware and phishing. Malware can be defined as a virus, adware, spyware or other similar nature of threat. In case of phishing attack, the attackers use your company name in emails and try to elucidate information from your client. This can be related to their personal information, credit card numbers or it is even the passwords.
Denial-of-service is another important type of Cyber attack which aims at completely shutting down a network by flooding it with traffic. Other types of attacks include man in the middle whereby the attacker put himself between two parties and performs a business transaction with the intention of stealing the data. SQL injection is also a potential cyber attack whereby the attacker tries to insert malicious code installed in an SQL server. Zero day exploit is also an important technique of Cyber attack which normally takes place between the time vulnerabilities get out in public and the availability of solution for it.
Cyber attacks can have a direct level of impact on your business. They may result into a loss or damage to electronic data and they often include viruses and malware infection. The loss of data can directly affect the functioning of the business, as it may be related to customer details or sales record which is essential to deal with customers. The possibility of facing lawsuits also increases significantly when there is a loss of private data about important stakeholders of the business. In case of attack through ransomware, there will be no choice available rather than paying the extortion money in order to get the data back. Along with these problems, cyber attacks also impact the business in terms of extra cost and loss of time needed to recover the data. Above all, cyber attack pose a significant damage to the reputation of business, as it may result into loss of future contracts with the client. The resulting impact would be lost of sales and ultimately a decline in the overall profitability performance of the business.
Protecting businesses from cyber attacks
Prevention is always considered as a better strategy as compared to cure. There are chances that preventive measures are ineffective in achieving complete protection, but they can act as shield to some extent in dealing with cyber attack. The initial step that needs to be taken is to contain the breach. It is important to segregate the network as a person and the cyber attack as a virus. The affected server needs to be isolated immediately in order to contain them from the threat of virus. It is important to disconnect the system from internet, and remote access should be disabled completely. In the opinion of assignment help Australia experts, the firewall setting needs to be properly maintained and security updates need to be carried out. The better strategy would be to change the affected and vulnerable passwords to a stronger one. The following steps can be helpful in protecting the business against cyber attack to a significant level:
• It is always considered better to use unique and strong passwords. Along with this, the integration of multi-step authentication process also acts as an extra layer of security against the threat of cyber attacks.
• It is also important to update the cybersecurity software on regular basis. It is always considered good to buy software that work perfectly rather than utilising free cyber security software. That is mainly because the cost of managing the cyber attack is significantly higher as compared to the cost required in buying security software.
• It is important to backup the data on regular basis in an isolated storage device. This will help in achieving faster recovery in the event of a cyber-attack. Cloud platform can be utilised in order to maintain backup, as they also provide disaster recovery amenities.
• It is also important to provide complete education to employees about data breaches. They need to be given adequate training on how to deal with the issues of Cyber attack so that they can be prepared to handle such situation. The guidelines within the General Data Protection Regulation can be helpful in educating employees about the principles of data security.
• Having cyber liability insurance is also a good strategy in dealing with the threat of cyber security. Hiring cyber security professional can also provide an extra layer of protection against such threats, but they may also result into an extra cost to the business.
Cyber attacks can therefore affect the functioning of a business in a direct way, and it is important to have proper preventive action plan in order to deal with such threats in a positive way. Having an updated security system along with proper back up of data can help in minimising the effect of cyber attacks and allow businesses to operate smoothly.
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