10 Cybersecurity Threats Every Business Owner Must Protect Themselves From

It’s an unfortunate fact that cyber security threats are everywhere, and it doesn’t help that there are multiple kinds of threats to contend with out there. Here’s a quick runthrough of the different malwares and threats you may encounter, and the sort of damage they can cause.

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1. Viruses: These programs infect other programs and use them to spread. They also have the unpleasant side effect of altering your data in some way, either by stealing it, corrupting it, or deleting it outright.
2. Computer Worm: Inching their way through your network to infect as many of your devices as possible, worms are encouraged by the prevalence of connections the typical computing device has to the outside to spread its malware payload to as large a radius as possible. The main threat that these present are mostly to the usability of your systems, as they will copy themselves until your disk space and bandwidth are at capacity.
3. Trojan Horse: Not unlike the wooden horse of ancient Greece, Trojan horse programs are those malicious bits of code that come disguised as a legitimate program. Once inside, a Trojan may introduce a keylogger to the computer, or manipulate a webcam, in order to further victimize its target.
4. Keylogger: Speaking of keyloggers, these are programs that take a record of the strokes a user makes on their keyboard. This makes them a useful tool for a hacker trying to obtain credentials for their target’s accounts.
5. Spyware: This malware gives a malicious user an inside peek into their victim’s systems. This could allow them to then design an attack on their victim that is more likely to succeed, based on the target’s behaviors and habits.
6. Phishing: This is an approach that a malicious user may elect to take to collect credentials from their targets, in which the malicious user tricks the target into believing that they are someone else. This can be accomplished through falsified websites with sign-in forms, or through email correspondence in which the malicious user poses as some other, seemingly trustworthy person.
7. Botnet: This threat is a web of interconnected, infected computers put in the control of the malware distributor. These “zombie” computers, as they are called, are then able to be used in further attacks.
8. DDoS: Or Distributed Denial of Service, signifies a form of attack in which botnets and other forms of malware are used to assault a system until it is rendered unusable under the influx of traffic. The DDoS then allows the attacker to take whatever data they please.
9. Rootkit: These tools are able to provide administrator access to a computer or network, which allows a malicious actor to leverage their control and cause grief for the user.
10. Exploit: An exploit is a specific piece of programming that takes advantage of a particular vulnerability in a system. Fortunately, these can be avoided by regularly patching your systems through updates, but it will take vigilance in order to be successful.

Of course, this is not a comprehensive list of the threats that are out there, which only proves that all businesses need to pay attention to their systems. SCW has a solution in our Remote Monitoring and Management services. To protect your business from threats like these, give us a call at (509) 534-1530.