Hyper-aware of all the possible types of cyber attacks to network & business

• IT security professional, you must be hyper-aware of all the possible types of cyber attacks to your network and your business.

• Now is the time to make sure your organization is able to identify and detect the most prevalent, and potentially the most harmful types of cyber threats against your organization.

• There are a number of common cyber attack techniques that make up intrusions, including multi-routing, covert scripts, protocol impersonation, and traffic flooding.

As an IT security professional, you must be hyper-aware of all the possible types of cyber attacks to your network and your business. This has always been one of the most difficult parts of your job, considering the ingenuity and perseverance of the criminals we must guard against, and how frequently cyber attacks can multiply as our systems (and the technology we rely on) evolve and expand. And now, your security operations processes are further challenged as your workforce shifts to 100% remote.

Now is the time to make sure your organization is able to identify and detect the most prevalent, and potentially the most harmful types of cyber threats against your organization today. The following are nine types of cyber attacks every security professional needs to be aware of. Intrusion refers to any unauthorized activity on your network, stealing valuable resources that result in placing your organization’s security at risk.

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That is essentially a brute force attack—letting the computer do the work, trying possible combinations of usernames and passwords until it finds the right one.

~ Cyber Security thought leader

There are a number of common cyber attack techniques that make up intrusions, including multi-routing, covert scripts, protocol impersonation, and traffic flooding. Network intrusions often present as unusual behavior, but not necessarily abnormal, which makes them difficult to detect and thus, slip under manual supervision. Perhaps the most vicious of threats posed by cybercriminals, ransomware seeks to hold business systems hostage for the purpose of extorting money from victims.

It is one of the most common cyber attack models being used today, in large part because these attacks are successful and often result in payouts in the tens of millions. Over the years we’ve seen several examples of why ransomware is one of the most effective and dangerous types of cyber attacks. What does ransomware look like? An attack often begins with an on-screen notification that data on your network has been encrypted and will remain inaccessible until the specified ransom has been paid, and a decryption key will follow. Failure to pay results in the key being destroyed, rendering the data inaccessible forever.

There are a number of common cyber attack techniques that make up intrusions, including multi-routing, covert scripts, protocol impersonation, and traffic flooding.

Security insider threats occur when someone close to an organization with authorized access misuses that access to compromise your company’s data or critical systems. Insiders do not have to be employees; they can also pose as partners, third-party vendors, and contractors. That’s the most difficult aspect of detecting an insider threat—it begins with humans, not systems. We’ve all seen an action movie where the criminal mastermind uses a high-powered computer to cycle through thousands of passwords in order to access a government facility. Well, this common cyber attack is not necessarily the stuff of fiction.

Among the best defenses against brute force attacks are multi-factor authentication, as well as requiring frequent password changes with complex alpha-numerical character combinations, making threat detection more likely. A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack takes place when criminals attempt to disrupt normal traffic on a network or to a server or system. Typically this is done by overwhelming the target’s infrastructure with a flood of internet traffic. Think of it like a traffic jam clogging up the highway, preventing normal traffic from arriving at its destination. Data exfiltration is the unauthorized movement of data outside of your organization.

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