One of the biggest challenges every business executive faces is protecting their assets from a data breach. Cyber attacks can occur in many different forms, and staying ahead of them is nearly impossible on your own. As a business executive, having a proactive IT management strategy is essential for not only protecting your business from cyber attacks, but also knowing what to do in the event one occurs. Working with a managed security service provider is often the best course of action to ensure nothing gets overlooked. Here are three of the most common cyber attack methods hackers use and how to protect yourself from them.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks
DDoS attacks are very common and can happen to anyone at any time. These attacks occur when cyber criminals overwhelm a network with different requests or data. The result is the network slows down significantly and prevents employees from doing their jobs. Many times DDoS attacks can be identified early on when you work with a managed service provider. But once a DDoS attack has taken full effect, your business could be looking at significant downtime at the very least.
Phishing or Spoofing
Phishing has always been one of the most popular attack methods for cyber criminals, and it likely will continue to be. These phishing attempts are most common via email, where the hacker will send a malicious link or attachment in hopes the user will click on it or open it. Once they do so, malware is downloaded and can impact the entire network.
Spoofing is also common and happens when a cyber criminal sends a link to a user that appears to be a legitimate website. Hackers are extremely creative when making websites look legitimate, so users can easily fall into their trap. A great proactive IT management strategy for business executives is to educate employees on how to identify phishing and spoofing attempts, as well as hiring a managed security service provider to identify these attempts before they become problematic.
Malware Installation
Malware can be installed in networks in many different ways, but most of the time it’s installed due to a user clicking on a malicious link or attachment. Sometimes you may notice something is wrong with your network due to the speed slowing down or acting strangely. Other times you may walk into work one day to find out your network has been completely infected. Having a managed service provider constantly monitor your network can give you some peace of mind and potentially stop a malware attack in its tracks.
Single Point of Contact is a complete managed security service provider dedicated to helping small and midsize businesses protect their network. We will constantly monitor your systems and networks and take care of any threats as they arise. Too many business executives make the mistake of trying to handle the IT side of their business on their own, which usually leads to more problems than solutions. If this is you, give us a call and see how our services can be beneficial to you in more ways than one.
