The modern world is full of ever-emerging cybersecurity threats. After all, as technology advances, cybersecurity threats and attacks will naturally become more complex and intelligent — meaning that any company should take responsibility to know how to counteract these threats.
With the knowledge of what these threats are and how you can stop them, you’ll be able to better protect yourself from any malicious forces looking to cause disruption or catastrophe to your organisation.
In this article, we’ll go over the emerging cyber threats, and how you can take steps to protect your business from them today.
Emerging Cyberthreats
While some of the threats are reminiscent of past attacks, new technologies and advancements mean that attackers have a newer modern arsenal of cybersecurity threats available to them.
Novel Spear Phishing
While phishing is an age-old common cyberattack, novel spear phishing is a type of phishing that has recently emerged. This attack aims to spoof email filters and spam scanners within your organisation, pretending to be an automated message.
The automated message will look like official correspondence from the email provider used — but will link to a fake login portal designed to steal login details from any victim that falls for the trick. This is more sophisticated than average phishing attacks, as they’re designed to not only get through your emails’ spam filters — using HTML tricks — but also emulate the email provider directly.
Multiple Extortion Ransomware
Ransomware is a type of attack that aims to inject a payload into your organisation’s systems and take hostage of them — often making them inaccessible unless a sum is paid to the attacker.
A multi-extortion ransomware attack is an extension of this — the attacker gains access to the victim’s network using a social engineering attack, and then proceeds to locate and exfiltrate high-value assets to their own storage network.
The attacker will then encrypt all of the data seized within the attack and threaten to sell or publish it unless the ransom is paid. This is why it’s more complex than your common ransomware attack — it uses a combination of social engineering and extortion tactics to fully breach a victim’s systems.
Zero Day Exploits
Zero-day exploits are exploits that are found within a piece of software that can be used to breach or disrupt an organisation. A zero-day exploit will take advantage of vulnerabilities within that system as a window of opportunity — known as a window of vulnerability — to be able to wreak havoc on companies using that system.
These exploits are usually eventually patched out by the developers of the software, which is why patching is so vital to ensuring that your organisation isn’t hit by one.
Cryptojacking
A new type of cyberattack, cryptojacking is the unauthorised use of an organisation’s system and devices to be used for cryptocurrency mining.
Since cryptocurrency mining requires hardware, cryptojackers will often simply commandeer hardware within your organisation to utilise solely for mining. The aim will often be to do this invisibly, however, the hardware strain that is caused by mining will make this much more noticeable over time.
This attack can be launched using any form of social engineering attack — usually phishing or using vulnerabilities to get access to your system — as it simply requires javascript code to be able to start the mining process.
How to Protect Your Business
EDR and XDR
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) and extended detection and response (XDR) are forms of data analysis that help inform you about threats looming around your organisation, allowing you to respond and take action quicker than signature-based anti-malware.
While very similar, there are differences between EDR and XDR. Where EDR is solely focused on the endpoint level, XDR is the evolution of this technology — a multipoint solution that can perform detection and response actions throughout your whole organisation.
AI-Powered Email Protection
With AI becoming increasingly intelligent, the capabilities of AI for modern cybersecurity are increasing too.
Using AI-powered email protection is one of the ways that AI can be incredibly effective in stopping social engineering attacks — while newer attacks try to circumvent spam filters, AI-powered tools to stop malicious emails will allow organisations to truly ensure that there’s nothing that can slip through the cracks.
Zero Trust
Zero trust is a model that teaches organisations to assume that any incoming requests are from an open network, rather than from trusted sources.
With zero trust, constant verification of identity is key — this helps assure that nobody will gain access to the system without the authorisation that they need to be able to do so.
Employee Education and Awareness Training
Education is vital to ensuring that your employees also know the threats that they can face, as phishing aims to take advantage of those who are uninformed and haven’t been educated on the threats that you can face.
With comprehensive employee training, you can ensure that every employee knows what to look out for, and teach them how to take the best steps to protect themselves.
Comprehensive Backup
In the event that something catastrophic happens, data backups and disaster recovery are vital to ensuring that the disruption caused is minimal. After all, a ransomware attack can be backbreaking without a comprehensive and regular backup system.
With a backup system in place, it becomes far easier to recover your data and get back to normal even if your company is facing infrastructure-blocking attacks.
How We Can Secure Your Business
Cybersecurity training and attack prevention strategies are vital in ensuring that your organisation is protected against the threats that you can face. These threats are some of the newest emerging threats — and as more threats take shape in the future, it’s important to be vigilant for those also. If you’re looking to implement a cybersecurity strategy within your organisation, get in touch with us today. Our experts will be able to help your organisation strategise ways to stay protected from any attacks that you may face going forward.
