Modern Era Cybersecurity threats

With our increased dependency on internet, mobile phones and gadgets, the risk of cyber security threats has become evident in the modern era. We have entered 20th year of the 21st century that calls for an increased awareness on the threats that linger around our personnel or financial data and the ever-more sophisticated cyber attacks involving malware, phishing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, concurrency, etc have placed the data and assets of corporations, governments and individuals at constant risk.

The world continues to suffer from a severe shortage of people that can professionally cater to the threats or can provide cheap services to even individuals. While normal people have to depend on the cops who themselves are dependent on a bunch of newbies to the field, the only way that is a life saver for people is to become aware, say a jack of all trades that has a buck of knowledge on cyber security too.

So here we are with a gist of the latest threats of year 2020 that lumbers around our bubbly world of networking and sophisticated lifestyle indulging cyber world.

Spear Phishing: Exceptionally personalized, crafted mails that are designed to outrun your intelligence on fraud. They may call you by name, use your professional title, and mention a project you’re working on. 

You can only be more vigilant than ever. Look out for incorrect or unusual URL's. Unless you are very very sure, do not open the links.

Ransomware: Asking for a return payment via cryptocurrency or credit card, it is type of malware that prevents users from accessing their system or personal files and demands ransom payment in order to regain access. There are three broad classifications- Scareware, screen lockers and the most nasty of all-the encrypting ransomwares. 

In the previous school year, education was the top target for Trojan malware, the number one most-detected (and therefore most pervasive) threat category for all businesses 2019. Adware and ransomware were also particularly drawn to the education sector last year, finding it their first and second-most desired target among industries, respectively.

If people do their research and adopt best practices for online hygiene, they can make sure that online habitat is a safe place for them.

Cryptocurrency Hijacking: The cryptocurrency movement has also affected cybersecurity in many ways. For example, cryptojacking is a trend that involves cyber criminals hijacking third-party home or work computers to “mine” for cryptocurrency. Because mining for cryptocurrency (like Bitcoin, for example) requires immense amounts of computer processing power, hackers can make money by secretly piggybacking on someone else’s systems. For businesses, cryptojacked systems can cause serious performance issues and costly down time as IT works to track down and resolve the issue. 

If one holds cryptocurrency, the only way to stay safe from cryptojacking is to have an up-to-date internet security suite that will protect you from all sorts of malicious software, including cryptojacking malware.

Botnets: A botnet is a collection of devices that have been infected with a bot program which allows an attacker to control them. Cybercriminals use special Trojan viruses to breach the security of several users’ computers, take control of each computer and organize all of the infected machines into a network of ‘bots’ that the criminal can remotely manage. Botnets can range in size from only a few hundreds to millions of infected devices. Attackers typically use the collective resources of the botnet to perform various disruptive or criminal activities, such as sending vast amounts of spam emails, distributing malware and launching Denial-of-Service attacks.

Installing effective anti-malware software will help to protect your computer against Trojans and other threats, can help you get away from this menace. The botnet created by the Conficker worm (also known as Downadup) included not only personal home computers but also major corporate servers and military resources in the United States, the United Kingdom and France. The affected organizations were forced to take significant remedial actions because of security concerns.

IoT Attacks: The Internet of Things is becoming more omnipresent day by day. The number of devices connected to the IoT is expected to reach 75 billion by 2025. It includes laptops and tablets, routers, webcams, household appliances, smart watches, medical devices, manufacturing equipment, automobiles and even home security systems.

Connected devices are handy for consumers and many companies now use them to save money by gathering immense amounts of insightful data and streamlining businesses processes. However, more connected devices means greater risk, making IoT networks more vulnerable to cyber invasions and infections. Once controlled by hackers, IoT devices can be used to create havoc, overload networks or lock down essential equipment for financial gain.