Cyber Security Threats You Need to Know About in 2020

If you wish to protect your business in 2020, you need to be aware of the most common cyber threats that it faces. Knowing can help you better prepare your company and give you a smart plan of action in order to avoid and counteract these attacks before they cost your company thousands. 

Phishing Attacks 

The good old phishing email has come a long way from its early days. Now, they are highly intelligent, strategic, and can be hard to spot. It is estimated that 1 out of every 99 emails sent is a phishing email, and with an estimated 269 billion emails being sent every day, the number of threats out there is staggering. Not every phishing scam is going to be caught by your email service provider, either. 

IoT Attacks 

The Internet of Things (IoT) offers huge benefits and possibilities. You can tell your watch to make an appointment and have that appointment appear on all of your calendars on all of your devices. There are smart fridges that let you know when food goes off. The IoT provides huge convenience and power over our everyday lives and businesses. 

However, there is also a cyber security risk. Because these small devices don’t have the same security levels as your computer or cloud system, they act like little back doors into your system. This has led to ransomware being distributed, all the way to massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. 

Ransomware 

Like phishing scams, ransomware is here to stay. It is so lucrative and the perpetrators rarely, if ever, get caught. What happens is that a ransomware virus gets downloaded to your system where all of your data is held for ransom. Pay the demands or risk having everything you have deleted forever. Avoiding such attacks demands that you hire a company that specializes in cyber security, which will provide you with a custom solution and an actionable plan. 

Internal Attacks 

Never underestimate the threat that comes from your own employees. This can be anything from intentional attacks, where employees abuse their access privileges to steal a bit on the side, to unintentional attacks, where your employees unwittingly bring a virus to work. 

There are two ways to prevent this. One is by improving the level of access authority and security in your business. The second is to simply train your employees to better spot threats right at home. 

Asynchronous Procedure Call 

On some systems and tools there is a huge security flaw, and that flaw is within the Asynchronous procedure call. This flaw is simple—it allows superusers to create new protocols on your system or device without your say-so. It was created to update security, but it has become a security threat itself. Always work to update your systems, and if you spot any unsupported software, remove it and find a better alternative. 

Your business needs to be aware of security threats if you wish to have any hope of avoiding and preventing them. Hiring managed IT services and combining your new knowledge can double your effectiveness and keep your business safe from threats.