While issues caused by app vulnerabilities and hacking are common knowledge, attacks aimed at individual users are rarely spoken about however they can be just as damaging and are becoming increasingly common. Cyber criminals are now more than ever, targeting individual users in hopes that at least one will make a mistake that will lead to significantly damaging results.
Below, we take a look at the most common threats faced by everyday users and their systems:
Software Updates Hackers are now hiding malware in what may appear to be regular software or patch update. By doing this, Cyber criminals are hitting users where they are most vulnerable. Attacks of this nature are so sophisticated that typical anti-virus programs fail to detect them in more than 80% of the cases.
Formjacking Formjacking is when cyber criminals hack into an online platform and proceed to steal user information whilst it’s still in transit between servers. Daily, there is up to 6,000 attempts on stealing information as it moves through the web.
Spear phishing Spear phishing refers to the type of phishing that targets one specific individual within an organisation. Spear phishing attempts are a major threats to businesses as they can cost a medium sized company up to £1.2 million.
Human Error Although cyber criminals are becoming more sophisticated by the day, most causes of cyber-attacks can be traced back to human error. IT professionals report that 54% of all cyber-attacks are due to user carelessness with passwords and them accessing unsafe/unsecure web sites.
For example, spear phishing is mostly successful because users will fail to recognise a phishing email emails which could lead to the hackers having access to that user/organisations contacts allowing them to gain more targets.
Other human error factors such as having passwords that’s are not very secure and accessing unsafe websites, also makes it easier for cyber criminals to attack by means of Formjacking.
Staying ahead of the Cyber Criminals By becoming a Cloudsis customer, you will be protecting your business due to the following Cloudsis features:
System Updates The Cloudsis platform is updated regularly by the Cloud Support team and as such, users are not given the permission to run updates which in turn minimises the risk of users accidentally running “fake” system updates or other installs which contain malware. Installations are always managed by your Cloud Provider.
Firewall The Cloudsis Cloud comes with state of the art security features that provide a high level of cyber security as well as firewall blockers and anti-malware. This minimises the risk of users falling victim to Formjacking as the built in security systems monitors for unsafe sites and warns the user accordingly.
Email scanning solution The cloud also comes with an email scanning solution which filters and quarantines fraudulent emails, spam, phishing emails; preventing it from reaching users. The Spam Blocker solution is updated in real-time to keep you one step ahead of spammers to minimise the likelihood of users being victims of spear phishing.
Training As a Cloudsis Cloud user, you have the option to undertake Security Training Sessions that will help users ensure that they are able to identify and accordingly deal with threats against their systems and how to prevent the incidents from re-occurring. Prevention is always better than cure!