Along with digital innovations, cyber attacks are increasing every year, and the issue of ensuring data security is becoming relevant. Moreover, attackers come up with more sophisticated methods of hacking. In such conditions, reliable mechanisms for ensuring cybersecurity are required. Here is more about cybersecurity types.
What is cybersecurity: main threats
What is cybersecurity in the modern world? Only some people will answer for sure. Meanwhile, this is, first of all, the protection of information in any form: personal, corporate data, company secrets – in general, everything that malefactors can use for their purposes. Threats increase every year.
Universal digitalization and unconditional advantages have brought high risks of data leakage into modern life, not intended for outdoor use. The leaders among the objects of hacker attacks are medical and government institutions and commercial organizations in the retail sector. The interest of cyber fraudsters in such databases is explained by the possibility of using the obtained information in their interests, usually associated with illegal methods of competition. Often the reason for hacking is the desire to receive compromising evidence on a specific person.
Varieties of cyber-attacks: the most popular tricks of scammers
The basics of cybersecurity in the information space understand what attacks can be. Knowing the types of cyber threats, you can better prepare to counter them. Consider the main types of cyber-attacks that users most often encounter.
- Phishing is an attack in which an attacker tries to extort the data he needs from the user. There are many phishing attack schemes. The most common are clone sites and emails.
- A DDoS attack is a cyber-attack on a network resource or service that makes it inaccessible to visitors. Such an attack is carried out by artificially created avalanche-like growth of requests to an online resource.
- Malicious programs are viruses that penetrate a computer and through it into the entire network. Moreover, there are many ways to infect a device with a virus. The most obvious ones are opening suspicious emails, visiting unfamiliar websites, and clicking on suspicious links.
How to protect the user?
To build a reliable security system, you must understand the basic ways to prevent cyber attacks.
- Encryption. Encryption is considered a reliable way to protect data. Services and programs that use encryption receive files and messages and convert them into code. Thus, even if an attacker interferes with the connection and gains access to the files, he will not be able to see the information he needs since it will be encrypted.
- Antivirus. It is one of the most effective cyber security solutions to protect your network from malware. But you should use only licensed software which is updated regularly.
- VPN. It is not only a way to get around blocking certain resources in some countries but also a way to protect against cyber attacks. First of all, a VPN hides the real IP address of the user, so attackers will not be able to determine the user’s location and network.
- Carrying out explanatory work with employees of the organization. As mentioned above, the network’s vulnerability is often associated with the human factor. For this reason, leaders of organizations should be interested in constantly training their employees and introducing certain rules for using computers.
- Authentication. It makes it much harder for attackers who want to log in on your behalf. If only a username and password are used to enter the system, then experienced criminals will find a way to enter someone else’s account. But if two-factor authentication is used to join, it is almost impossible to do this.