With the increasing dependency of businesses on digital data, the number of data breaches in the United States has increased almost tenfold over the last two decades. Similarly, there has been a significant increase in the global number of data breaches with confirmed data loss. Even the government institutions in the U.S were affected by cyber intrusions. This blog post will highlight how cybercriminals attack businesses.
Phishing Emails
Phishing attacks are the most common types of cybercrime in the United States. At least 65 percent of U.S. organizations have fallen prey to different types of phishing attacks through emails, social media posts, and even text messages. Cybercriminals send out fake emails while pretending to be official representatives of an organization. Downloading any links or, in some cases, even just opening the email gives hackers access to confidential data.
Social Engineering
Although social engineering is considered the least technical method, it has proven to be effective nevertheless. Hackers carefully study a business's patterns and determine any vulnerabilities to design their attack accordingly.
Malware Attacks
Malware attacks are also very common. Suppose any of the employees visit any upload or download malware from a website, USB, or infected software. This can then record keystrokes, passwords, usernames, etc., and extract valuable information.
Middle Man Attacks
Many individuals and companies often fall prey to this common approach adopted by many hackers. In the middle man attack, hackers carefully observe an organization's activity and become involved in a conversation between two parties. Using their hacking techniques, hackers can easily impersonate both parties and access the data that both parties were trying to share. Hackers can also intercept and send and receive data without the knowledge of either of the parties involved.
Evil Twin Attack
An Evil Twin approach is similar to Middle Man Attack. The hackers imitate the original network to trick organizations and employees into submitting their confidential data. Unprotected Wi-fi internet is a common source of such attacks. Hackers simply broadcast the same SSID as the legitimate AP of the Wi-Fi and fool their desired targets into connecting their devices to it. Once the device is connected, the hacker gains access to all the data stored in that device.
Get in touch with Lean Security to prevent hackers from attacking your business in any of these ways. We are providing external penetration testing services to help secure businesses of our clients. For more details, contact us at +61 (2) 8078 6952 or send us an email at info@leansecurity.com.au.