In today’s context, cybercrime is steadily rising and drastically impacting every other industry across the globe. That said, CyberCrime magazine has predicted that, in 2021, there will be 3.5 million unfulfilled cybersecurity jobs. Though attackers are constantly looking out for new strategies and exploits to damage and defraud companies, there are some standard threat strategies that remain among the most frequent ones to a business’ cybersecurity. In light of this trend, we will be discussing the top cybersecurity threats of 2020 that one must watch out for.
Top Cybersecurity Threats
So, what are some of the top cybersecurity threats to watch out for in 2020?
1. IoT-Based Attacks
It is an attack that makes use of a victim’s use of internet-connected smart devices such as alarm clocks, wifi-enabled speakers, and other appliances, to infect a network with malware. These attacks often target IoT devices as they are easier to compromise and overlooked when it comes to installing security patches.
These attacks can be prevented by having a thorough inventory of the devices on the network that are connected to the internet and the operating systems they run. The firmware for these devices must be maintained up-to-date.
2. Social Engineering/ Phishing Attacks
In this attack, the attacker creates a fraudulent website, text, or email to trick an individual into providing their personal information like credit card information, online account passwords, and login credentials. These attacks can be the most dangerous of attacks as they can trick an employee into giving their legitimate details and can then wreak havoc on the entire business system. More and more attackers have started using phishing attacks as it is effective, cheap, and easy to pull off. It is a low-risk, high-reward strategy for cyber attackers as the time and effort they invest is very minimal.
Training employees to recognize phishing attempts, employing a policy of least privilege for user accounts to limit access, and using custom anti-phishing solutions are some effective steps that can be taken to counter phishing attacks.
3. Internal Attacks
The biggest cybersecurity threats a company faces is from its employees. The access that employees have can make them capable of inflicting great harm if they decide to use their access privileges for their personal gain. This may even happen unknowingly when they allow user accounts to be compromised by attackers or download dangerous malware without noticing. These attacks are very dangerous as they can cause enormous damage to your system. Any careless employee can break the network security of the company to allow for major data security breaches.
The best thing to do to avoid an internal attack is to use a policy of least privilege to limit the IT resources and systems employees can access.
4. MageCart
Stealing payment card details and using it for financial fraud will increase in 2020. Usage of chip-based cards such as Visa, EuroPay, and Mastercard has led to a rise in criminals from card-present fraud to card-not-present fraud. They obtain card numbers easily from online databases. As the CVV number is also required, magecart attacks have started increasing in today’s context, as it is not possible to hack the CVV number from card databases. In this attack, the details from a retailer’s website will be skimmed, and the payment details are entered in plain text before the number is encrypted, and the CVV number is destroyed.
5. Ransomware Attacks
These refer to an attacker infecting a victim’s system with a piece of malware to encrypt their entire data. They then present the victim with an ultimatum- either to pay the ransom or lose their data forever. The best way to avoid this attack will be to set up strong perimeter security like firewalls to prevent malware from being uploaded to the network systems. Another method is to have antivirus programs for individual workstations that will scan each email attachment for encryption malware.
Conclusion
I hope you have now gained a fair idea of the top cybersecurity threats to watch out for in 2020. These are predictions, and it is important to understand the predictions are actually a balance between what is currently happening and what is bound to happen. But, as always, the cybersecurity industry will focus on defeating cyber threats.
To know more about cybersecurity certifications and to become a cybersecurity expert, check out Global Tech Council.
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