Hackers are going to continue to look for new ways to extort and steal information from businesses and organizations, which unfortunately means those businesses and organizations will have to continue to look for new ways to protect themselves.
Make sure your entire company is aware of what security policies are in place and update them on any new security policies you will be implementing. You should also look at each area of vulnerability in your company and determine what you can do to make those areas more secure.
Ransomware
As ransomware defenses are improving, the revenue that hackers can get from ransomware means they won’t be scared off easily. Not only that, but the business model for ransomware is changing, too. Ransomware as a service (RaaS) is now being sold on the dark web, opening up an opportunity for more criminals who lack technical sophistication to execute this form of cyber attack. Typically, the RaaS user can download the malware for little or no cost, and splits any proceeds earned with the originator. Ransomworms, which are ransomware that replicates itself to rapidly spread to multiple computers, have also been reported, and will likely proliferate.
IoT and DDoS Hacks
IoT devices are utilized for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) to flood a targeted website by an overwhelming amount of requests from millions of connected machines. Smart devices use open public ports so that they can be accessible away from home. Hackers establish a large database of these open ports to form a botnet, a large amount of exploitable ports they can infect with malware. Then, these devices are used to transmit small amounts of data to aid in a DDoS attack.
Victims of a DDoS attack may or may not know the reason they were targeted. Hackers may have political motivations, desire to take out business competition, use it as a means of extorting money, or execute an attack to distract victims while performing another malicious action.
Most DDoS attacks fall into one of three categories, each targeting different components of the IT infrastructure. Volume-based attacks saturate a site’s bandwidth to block other visitors. Protocol attacks attack servers to tie up enough resources to lead to denial of service. The third major category is application layer attacks. These attempt to crash web servers through a flood of requests that appear legitimate
Phishing Attacks
The number of phishing attacks are on the rise, as they have been for the past few years. Emails disguised as banking or work emails prove the most effective at tricking people into thinking they are legitimate. These emails then link to a webpage that looks legitimate but is actually fraudulent and will request credit card and bank account information, as well as other sensitive personal details. These websites are created to spread malware and to gain access to your personal information.
Crypto-Currencies
A Crypto-Currency is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange using cryptography to secure the transactions and to control the creation of additional units of the currency. Crypto-Currencies are classified as a subset of digital currencies and are also classified as a subset of alternative currencies and virtual currencies.
Bitcoin’s popularity is forcing Cyber Criminals to improve their laundering techniques, or adopt different Crypto-Currencies altogether.
Social Engineering
Security experts can hardly say it enough: humans are your biggest Cyber Security vulnerability. The breaches can be intentional or unintentional. They can be the result of a single employee’s carelessness, a disgruntled employee seeking revenge, or the victimization of an employee by a sophisticated hacker.
Most email-savvy employees probably assume they can identify a spam email meant to scam the recipient out of money. However, these attacks are becoming much more sophisticated.
Human beings increasingly rely on technology to make their lives easier and achieve aims that they could not reach using people power alone. But there has yet to be technology developed to make humans infallible, and people will continue to be the biggest Cyber Security threat in 2017 and beyond.
Learn more about Social Engineering
2017 will see major advancements in technology. With these advancements, we must monitor the technology we use to make sure we’re protected from ever-evolving cyber threats.