Protecting Your Company From Cyber Attacks | Innovation Management

If you’re running a business that exists digitally small or large, you do need to understand cyber threats, also known as cyber attacks.

What is a cyber attack? These are threats that can harm your business significantly by either hijacking or attacking the networks that make your company run. You must understand these types of cyber threats so that you can work on preventing them in the future.

DDOS, standing for distributed denial-of-service, is a term used for a type of cyber attack in which a group of computers will rapidly ping your website or networks, causing them to shut down as long as the attacks go on.

These types of attacks have cost millions of dollars for many large companies in video games, streaming, and more, as they aren’t able to make money when the general public can’t access their products. The reason these attacks have been increasing is that in the past, hackers had to have physical access to a number of computers and networks that could DDOS for them, while now they can do it over the internet as long as they have the resources.

To protect yourself from these types of attacks, you’ll want to hire a network professional that can set you up with services that will redirect any DDOS activity to a dummy server so that any of your public services remain online.

Some cyber threats can be a danger to your business even if they aren’t happening directly on your servers. Phishing attacks are when someone imitates your business and contacts your customers through phone, email, or text messages to obtain their login information for your services.

This can be dangerous to your company, as customers may turn off from you if they believe that you didn’t do enough to warn them about who’s legitimate and who’s not. To make sure that customers know when it’s you asking for personal information, give them an entire guide to phishing during their sign-up. You’ll want to do this by explaining what they should be looking for when your company is asking for personal information, and which types of information you would never ask for so they know what standards to be looking out for. As your customers aren’t going to be all internet savvy, you must protect them from these types of attacks.

SQL Attacks

If your business uses online databases, you could be at risk for SQL attacks. These happen when an attacker creates an entry in an incorrect statement in your database, which then allows them to access the information in that database. From there, they can harm your business by grabbing your data and deleting it, stealing information, and more.

You must make sure that you don’t run into these attacks by hiring professionals who can apply prevention techniques to your databases, as many online businesses can run into these types of attack attempts monthly.

Depending on the size of your business, you might have a wireless network in your office, which outsiders may be able to connect to. While this might not seem bad if they are only able to access general web pages, you could be at risk of eavesdropping attacks. These types of attacks are when someone can use a packet sniffer on a network which can bring them all types of information that isn’t sent encrypted, such as credit cards or passwords.

To protect anyone from having an eavesdropping attack using your services no matter what network they are on, you need to make sure that all of the important packets you send and receive are encrypted so that nobody on a network can read them. Additionally, make sure you lock down your wireless networks, as you can always be put in harm’s way even if you are working with encrypted packets.

As technology improves, you’ll see new types of attacks start to pop up. Make sure that you hire a team of cybersecurity professionals that are always looking into ways to make sure your business doesn’t run into any issues that can affect employees and customers. No matter if your business is small or large, you need to be prepared for cybersecurity issues today.

About the author

Jamison Hutton is a tech enthusiast and business intelligence consultant. He’s a freelance journalist who loves writing about people’s small business dreams. Jamison resides in Houston, Texas with his wife and son.