Common cyber attacks & how to avoid them

While cybercriminals are always developing new methods of attack, they often follow similar themes. In fact, they are generally just more powerful versions of what’s gone before.

With that in mind, Luke Watts, Director of RoundWorks IT, provides his insight on three common cyberattacks and how to avoid them.

Malware

These days, malware covers a whole range of options rather than just viruses. With that said, it can still be very useful to think of malware as viruses. This is because the way to protect against malware is essentially the same as the way to protect against organic viruses.

Firstly, you aim to stop malware from getting entry into your system by practising robust hygiene. For example, you need to:

• protect your system’s perimeter
• use anti-malware protection
• keep your software
• operating systems and firmware regularly updated
• train your staff in basic cybersecurity

 One basic step in protecting your systems from malware is to disconnect them from the internet when out of use. With modern computers, this generally translates to turning them off completely. The less time a device spends connected to the internet, the fewer opportunities cyberattackers have to work on it.

Secondly, you need to be prepared to isolate and remove any malware that does get through your defences. This could mean cleaning your system. Alternatively, it could mean swapping out the infected hardware (e.g. storage unit) and destroying it.

Ransomware

Ransomware is a specific form of malware. It is, however, important enough and prevalent enough to be worth listing separately. Ransomware encrypts data to prevent companies from accessing it. If companies want their data back, they have to pay a ransom to the attackers and hope they fulfil their promise to release it.

Over recent years, the threat from ransomware has become even stronger as attackers can threaten to leak or sell the data. The fact that ransomware has become such a huge threat clearly demonstrates two points. Firstly, data has become a massively valuable commodity. Secondly, companies are still failing to take the necessary precautions to keep it safe.

Protecting your data from ransomware only requires two steps. Firstly, you have to make sure that all your data is regularly backed up. Secondly, you have to make sure that any sensitive data is always stored in encrypted form.

Your backups mean you don’t have to worry about losing access to your data. Encryption means that you don’t have to worry about your data being leaked or sold. If these two steps are taken then ransomware attacks will become a minor inconvenience rather than a potential catastrophe.

Phishing

Phishing is confidence trickery updated for the digital age. A cyberattacker poses as a legitimate figure, often an authority figure. They attempt to gain their victim’s trust and use this to extract information and/or money. Phishing attacks are often carried out by email but more sophisticated attacks may use phone calls or even in-person contact.

Many phishing attacks are obvious at first glance. The classic giveaway that an email is a phishing attempt is that the greeting has the intended victim’s email address instead of their name. Some phishing attempts, however, can be extremely sophisticated. These tend to be targeted attacks, known as spear phishing or whale phishing.

Spear phishing is simply a phishing attack that is customised to prey on the known, or likely, weaknesses of a specific, intended victim. Whale phishing is spear phishing carried out against senior employees. Spear phishing and whale phishing attacks are increasingly likely to be carried out by phone as this is harder for companies to monitor in real-time.

Protecting against phishing attacks requires a combination of automated defences (such as email monitoring) and staff training. Automated defences will filter out a lot of the more basic attacks and well-trained human staff will pick up on the more sophisticated ones.