In the 21st century, businesses must use enterprise security risk management. Companies are more and more connected to the internet to make workflow easier for their clients and employees. However, this ease of access also creates large targets of opportunity for bad actors and criminals. Cybercrimes are a low-risk high reward way for criminals to make money. According to the Symantec web site in 2018 cybercrimes raked in 1.5 trillion dollars surpassing the GDP of Australia in Spain. Through funding, cybercrimes are constantly evolving creating new malware and methods to find vulnerabilities in networks.
Good enterprise security risk management can protect all kinds of institutions from cyber-attacks. Common institutions are government, corporations, financial institutions, utility, and industrial equipment. Here are some common ways in which hackers try to access sensitive information and computer systems.
Back Doors. Which are used to access computer systems remotely?
Denial-of-service attacks. They crash systems by bombarding it with more traffic than the system can handle. Making it harder for legitimate users to access the network.
Direct access attack. Using a CD-ROM or flash drive with a virus or malware and plugging it directly into the computer system. This circumvents any internet security by having direct access to the machine.
Phishing. Which is more common nowadays exploits unaware users. It happens when a user is contacted by a fake email or text that looks legitimate and asks for sensitive
information allowing the hacker to gain access to the system and data.
Privileged escalation. Hackers use this method to gain access to restricted data then increase their user rights to get full unrestricted access to a system.
Social Engineering is one of the hardest to detect and has cost US businesses 960 million dollars. Social Engineering uses the trust of a user to get sensitive information by impersonating a customer, contractor or even banks.
Working with a security design expert to implement an enterprise security risk management program can safeguard your company against financial loss, a loss in reputation and invasion of sensitive information. Common cybersecurity measures are threat prevention the use of hardware and software firewalls. Threat Detection using programs that detect attacks in progress to the network and assist in post-attack analysis with help from audits. The incident response is another measure. Companies identify and locate the vulnerabilities in the network and eliminate them. In extreme situations, they scrap the whole system then rebuild it without the holes in the security. However, training your personnel or end-user is the best way to safeguard your systems. Most successful attacks are due to human error. Your employees’ clients and partners should be made aware of good password management and the latest in cyber-security threats and prevention. Let them know the difference between ligament email and text as compared to one that is faked. Let them know what kind of information you require to do business and in what form it will take. Network security starts and ends with the people who use it.
Computers, phones and other connected technologies are used to make a business run faster and smoother. Customers and clients are accustomed to and demand this ease of use. Hackers know this and slip through the cracks to gain access to these systems. Moreover, there is a low bar for hackers to break into cybercrime and you don’t need to be a genius to do it. Cheap hacking tools and access to the internet is all malicious individuals need to get off the ground making the proliferation of cybercrime and threats to a network more prevalent. Good cybersecurity is essential to business now more than ever.
