Cyber attacks aim to invade, cause damage, steal important data, and/or gain control to access documents from private or government companies. To achieve success in an invasion, hackers seek to destroy the network or system of organizations of their security weaknesses.
Know some types of cyber attack
With the modernization and popularization of technology, there are several types of cyber attacks. Meet some of the types most committed by criminals.
Malware
Malware is malicious software that harms or exploits a company’s devices, programmable networks, or services. With the use of this tool, hackers are able to extract and find important data from companies.
Some famous examples of Malware are:
- Worms: aims to copy information from one machine to another;
- Trojan Horses: Apps that seem harmless but steal personal data from a device, spy on it, and provide an attack;
- Spyware: this is a type of program installed on the computer without the user’s permission to capture the information stored there.
Denial of Service (DoS) attack
Do you know that cyber attack suffered by the Jaime Câmara Group, quoted above? This example can be framed in the denial of service attack. The main characteristic of this crime is the inefficiency of an organization’s network or website.
For this to happen, DoS overloads or floods a machine with the aim of interrupting its daily operations, which makes access to that device impossible – hence the origin of the name denial of service.
Phishing
Phishing can be interpreted as fishing in the technological segment and is also associated with a type of cyber attack. The name comes from the characteristic of the action, which normally uses bait to catch users who are surfing the internet carelessly. The goal is to steal personal data, such as CPF, banking information, and passwords, among others.
With the data in hand, criminals can make bank transfers, and online purchases, sell the data to companies or use it for the purpose of fraud.
SQL injection attack
The SQL attack happens due to a vulnerability found by the attacker in the SQL (Structured Query Language) code to manipulate a certain database, obtaining potentially valuable information.
This is the most common and dangerous type of attack, as it can be carried out on any application on the Web or on sites that use a database that are programmed in that language, that is, almost all of them.
Recent cyber attacks
Cyber ​​attacks are increasingly common, and consequently are an extremely current and relevant agenda for companies and users who want to use digital services safely and without having their data violated on the internet.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, home office work became a necessity and, as a result, employees began to access confidential data without proper security.
This factor contributed to the increase in attacks: in 2020 alone, more than 370 million cyber attack attempts were recorded on Pak companies, according to a report by CNN.
Check out some examples of cyber-attacks now:
Russian cyber attacks
According to Microsoft data, more than 58% of recorded cyber attacks were attributed to hackers from Russia, who managed to steal data from other countries with great efficiency.
Also, Russian hackers are popularly known for their agility when compared to cybercriminals from other countries and the country is known as the hotbed of computer intruders.
The country accumulates several accusations from the United States for covering up the actions of hackers who act to attack public bodies and private companies abroad.
Cryptocurrency
Do not think that the cryptocurrency market is not also a target for criminals. Throughout 2022, three different cyber attack crimes were recorded. During a one-week gap, hackers managed to steal $15.6 million worth of cryptocurrency from Inverse Finance.
The company Ronin Network, which is focused on games, had $625 million stolen from its accounts and Ola Finance had a loss of $3.6 million in cryptocurrencies.
Equifax
Due to the fragility of its system, the company Equifax (from the credit management branch) had in 2017 the data of more than 147.9 million customers in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, leaked. This leak generated a major crisis for the company, which led to the departure of then president Richard Smith.
Learn how to protect yourself from a cyber attack
As we have seen, cyber attacks bring with them major problems, whether in the functioning of systems, extra expenses with resolutions to regain access, financial losses due to the rescue of data and systems or an image crisis, followed by indemnities.
Thus, it is necessary for companies to create protection strategies, to ensure information security. Check out some tips:
1. Use all authentications
Authentication is an efficient way to prevent cyber attacks from happening. Therefore, it must be enabled in all applications that have internet access within the organization.
This simple action prevents hackers from stealing your employees’ passwords through phishing and allows them to log in easily, as it requires more than one verification step so that only authorized people can enter the system.
2. Develop access control
When a new employee enters the company, it is necessary to grant access so that he can perform his activities within the system offered by the organization. That said, it is vital to assess which systems, applications, and documents are important for the professional to develop their respective activities.
It is always important to revoke access when the employee leaves the organization. If this does not happen, the former employee will be able to enter the system and have access to company data.
By constantly monitoring which employees have active and inactive access, in addition to screening which accesses and systems these are, your organization tends to be more secure and avoid internal threats.
3. Check third-party security
Typically, most companies need to contract with third-party companies or systems, such as Google’s workspace services. These external tools may suffer a cyber attack and thus have your company’s data leaked.
Also, if any system needs access to your organizational system, it is important to be aware of the risks, such as developing rigorous security controls to identify possible threats to the system.
4. Back up data
Data backup consists of making a backup copy of data in different places, such as cell phones, computers, or systems, such as applications, and software, among others.
Companies constantly deal with important data, so it is essential to perform regular backups. This is a measure that helps prevent the loss of precious information for the organization.