As the full effects of the pandemic began to unfold, cybersecurity experts saw a drastic increase in cybersecurity complaints. In 2020, financial losses from cybercrime were more than $1 trillion.
Cyber threats are growing in their sophistication and complexity. They target people who work from home or do some other form of remote work. This is because remote workers have a higher dependence on digital services. Here are five of the biggest concerns in Cybersecurity today.
1. Social Engineering
Many cyber security breaches use social engineering techniques, like phishing. Social engineering attacks include scareware, phishing emails, and quid pro quo attacks. Social engineering attacks aim to manipulate human psychology to attain specific goals.
Zero trust policies are helping enterprises counteract social engineering. Users are only granted access to privileges to complete a particular task. These privileges only last for the user’s time to complete the task. If hackers get their hands on someone’s credentials, they will not have access to the entire system or the ability to move laterally to access sensitive data.
2. Ransomware
Ransomware uses data encryption to prevent a user from accessing certain information on their network or completely blocks the user from accessing their device or network. Once the victim pays the ransom amount, their systems are unlocked.
In 2020, ransom demands reached $1.4 billion. Including the cost of the ransom, the average price to rectify the damage could reach up to $1.4 million. At the University of California, COVID-19 research data was compromised. Hackers demanded $1.14 million to release the information. Hackers held hospitals for ransom in the United States and Europe, disabling patient care systems. In at least one case, this led to fatalities.
3. Cloud Computing Vulnerabilities
The global cloud computing market is growing by leaps and bounds. The pandemic gave the global cloud economy a noticeable boost. This has made cloud computing infrastructures the perfect target for hackers.
Hackers look for cloud services that do not have a password or unpatched systems. They may also perform brute force attacks to get access to user accounts. Once they gain access, they will attempt to plant ransomware, access sensitive data, or attempt coordinated DDoS attacks.
Decision-makers and stakeholders must focus on accurate cloud storage configuration to strengthen cloud computing defenses. They must focus on the security of their APIs and monitor end-user actions with cloud devices.
Securing cloud infrastructure is vitally important, especially for organizations that provide solutions as a service. For example, the best ccaas solutions, which is Contact Center as a Service solution, will not just offer automated call distribution, interactive voice response, omnichannel analytics, performance management, and CMR integration. They are going to also be able to ensure their clients that the organization’s cloud infrastructure is secure. Offering this level of security puts customers at ease, making them more inclined to trust an organization with their information.
4. Third-Party Software
The top e-commerce retailers are connected to hundreds, if not thousands, of third-party resources. A good percentage of these third-party resources have critical vulnerabilities. All it takes is for one system within the ecosystem to be compromised to allow hackers to enter and attack other domains.
According to one report, web applications played a role in 43 percent of breaches related to e-commerce in 2020. It was not just small e-commerce businesses that were affected. Some of the biggest names in e-commerce lost money due to third-party software vulnerabilities.
5.DDoS Attacks
In 2020, there were millions of DDoS attacks attempted. On average, for each hour a company’s services were disrupted, it cost up to $100,000.
Cybercriminals are using artificial intelligence to perform their DDoS attacks. This has allowed them to steal data from millions of users, causing applications and websites to have hours, if not days, of downtime. As businesses have embraced remote work, their dependence on digital services increases their vulnerability to cybercriminals. DDoS attacks are not expensive to deploy. For this reason, there are more cyber criminals than ever before looking to make money with these types of attacks.
The Wrap-up
The technological changes implemented in the aftermath of the pandemic are not going anywhere. For this reason, businesses of all sizes will need to spend money on their IT budgets to increase cyber security. They must effectively communicate new policies with their workforce and train employees to respond to unique cyber attacks.
