Small businesses are increasingly becoming victims of hacker attacks. If earlier cybercrime targeted mainly large companies, now neither small firms nor even individual entrepreneurs are insured against its “networks”. A loud confirmation of this was the hack of the OneLogin cloud authorization service, which happened in June 2019. As a result, cybercriminals gained access to the authentication data of more than 2,000 companies from almost fifty countries.
Why Are Hackers Targeting Small Businesses?
According to antivirus developers, small businesses are a tidbit for modern hackers. Such enterprises have more funds and other resources at their disposal than ordinary users. At the same time, the level of their protection is significantly lower than that of large firms and corporations. This combination makes small businesses vulnerable and, at the same time, attractive to cybercriminals of all levels.
Hackers target small companies and individual entrepreneurs due to the fact that the latter pay insufficient attention to their cybersecurity. They are confident that attackers will not waste time hacking their Internet resources (in their opinion, there is nothing to take there), and therefore underestimate the potential level of risk.
What Are the Types of Cyber Attacks?
Cybercrime is interested in stealing funds or confidential information of users as efficiently and quickly as possible. Today, hackers have access to a wide range of methods of carrying out cyberattacks, which continues to grow due to new technologies. These include:
1. DDoS. During this attack, the company's server is deliberately overloaded with requests in order to make a specific website or the entire local network inaccessible;
2. APT. A targeted cyberattack carried out over a long period of time and in several stages, makes it possible to hack even a highly protected site, network, or program. There are 5 stages of APT, their sequential execution helps the attacker not only to achieve a result but also to hide his tracks;
3. Internal Attack. This type of hacking is not performed by an outside criminal, but by someone from within the company (current or former employee, etc.). Using his administrative privileges, he gains access to private corporate data or finance;
4. Malware. Malicious programs ("viruses") are one of the most common methods of organizing cyber attacks on small business websites or servers. With their help, cybercriminals easily hack the resources of firms and entrepreneurs, especially those who do not use professional anti-virus software;
5. Cracking a Password. Now there are three main types of this cyber attack: brute force (brute-force attack), dictionary search (using special programs with dictionaries) and keylogging (programs that secretly record certain user actions, including entering an ID and password);
6. Phishing. Phishing attacks are based on sending letters on behalf of well-known services/brands with links to fake Internet sites that are difficult to distinguish from the original ones. The user enters his username and password on them, after which these data go to the criminal.
So, even small businesses these days are not immune from targeted cyberattacks, and their confidential information and money in their accounts may well become the prey of hackers. To protect yourself from this risk, you need to pay due attention to cybersecurity issues and protect your servers/sites from hacking.
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