At the infamous battle of Troy, the Greeks had some 1,186 ships each armed with 50 men. They attacked the walls of the fortress relentlessly but to no avail. The fall of Troy came about not from the size and strength of the Greek army, but from its ingenious use of a gifted wooden horse to sneak inside the city and wreak havoc once inside.

Cyber security threats are much like the Greek army. It is the ones that sneak in undetected or are even welcomed in by an unwitting employee, that bring the whole network down from the inside. Here are three common cyber security threats businesses face and some techniques to employ to fend them off.

Botnets:

Botnets slip into your network and infect individual computers. Once infected, the computer can be remotely controlled by an operator across the globe.

Botnets are often used to send spam phishing emails to customers, spread other types of malware to computers in the network, deliver ransomware, steal sensitive data or bring the computer down as a denial strategy.

The Simuda botnet recently infected over 770,000 machines across 190 countries, in one of the largest botnet attacks on the planet. It went undetected for years and stole financial data from infected machines.

Stop your computer or network from being enslaved by educating employees on the dangers of suspicious email links. Ensure all computers are up to date with the latest and strongest anti-virus software and ensure firewalls are set to the maximum security level.

SQL Injection Attacks:

Structured query language (SQL) attacks are a method of cybercrime that attacks databases. It targets the servers which store the data held in a database and uses malicious code to extract data. Databases which store customers’ financial details and passwords are usually the targets of such attacks.

The best way to prevent SQL attacks is by ensuring your cyber security specialists are trained in the very latest and best database security practices. Enrolling teams on in online cyber security certification courses is a good place to start. ITVProTV’s IT training for individuals is also a good way to ensure there is at least one highly-trained database security specialist in your workforce.

SQL attacks can be prevented by encrypting confidential and sensitive data in the database, setting error images to only display on the database administrator’s machine, keeping database patches up to date, and by limiting database permissions and privileges where possible.

Man-in-the-Middle attacks:

Man-in-the-middle attacks involve an attacker placing themselves between the computer and the network or database. They can then interrupt the traffic, filter through the information and steal sensitive data.

These types of attacks are most commonly attempted on unsecured Wifi networks where attackers can position themselves between a visitor’s device and the network.

Ensure all employees are only using secured Wifi networks. If possible, get them to only use their work laptops or computers on the organization’s Wifi networks. This will greatly reduce the company’s vulnerability to man-in-the-middle attacks.

These are just three of the most common forms of attack, however, there are hundreds more. To equip your business with the highest level of security, ensure you have several certified cyber security specialists on your payroll and provide regular cyber security training sessions for all employees either in-house or through online IT training providers.

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