Is Your Business in Danger?
Are you a small or medium-sized business owner? And you are sure cybersecurity is something ephemeral or for big companies to worry about? Or do you think that you are not really at risk because you don't do e-commerce? The reality is that access to your clients' database, your emails, and all the information you think is secure on the server are the things that might be easily targeted by threat actors whose tools keep evolving.
Let us briefly describe the biggest risk vectors small to medium-sized businesses are facing these days: Business Email Compromise (BEC), Malware and Ransomware.
Business Email Compromise is a common term for a Phishing attack that impacts organizations. It refers to the process of receiving email(s) that are not legitimate with a purpose of disrupting business operations. The most common forms of phishing are URLs contained within the body of an email message, attachments and credential harvesting (which is generally after a link has been clicked, whereby you are prompted to enter credentials for a common website or service). Phishing uses social engineering to deceive or pressure someone to disclose sensitive information by typically impersonating a known figure within a/the company. According to the FBI 2022 Internet Crime Report, phishing remains the most common cyber-attack, with approximately 3.4 billion daily spam emails, resulting in 10.3 billion (USD) in financial losses.
Malware is malicious software that carries the intent of gaining unauthorized access to one or more assets for disruption to business, stealing data or other future gain. It is closely related to Business Email Compromise and Phishing because it is often deployed through the same nefarious emails. As of 2023, over 90% of malware detections have entered environments via email. When not entering via email, the most common deployment/infection vector for malware is via websites - typically clicking links or active content that then deploys a payload onto your machine and into your environment.
Ransomware is malware that has entered an environment, encrypts data and holds that data hostage until a ransom is paid. Email continues to be the most common vector for ransomware infection, with over 90% of cyber attacks being caused by human error or behaviour. Attackers are spending more time moving through networks and systems before launching the ransomware in order to increase the scale of disruption. For example, recently, a local company was impacted by malware that led to Ransomware. The malware stayed dormant for ~1 year before infecting the company’s server and requesting ransom.