Your devices are under threat of attack every 14 seconds making Cybersecurity the need of the hour

Cybersecurity is how one protects networks, systems, and programs from digital trespasses, commonly feared as cyber-attacks that come in all shapes and sizes and are targeted at changing, accessing, or mainly destroying sensitive information. Attacks may come in the form of overt ransomware, hijacking products, and tools to extort money, or covert operations, which are usually only discovered months after the system has been accessed, if at all. Cyber-criminals are getting smarter and skilled each day, and new varieties of cyberattacks are cropping up on the network horizon, although a few remain the usual suspects.

Social engineering is when a person’s innocence or ignorance is wielded against them. For example, you’ve probably heard of voice phishing and email phishing. Phishing is a form of social engineering and 98% of cyber-attacks rely on it (Source: Purplesec). Here, hackers psychologically manipulate the victims’ natural curiosity, trust, or naivete into divulging their personal information, often by posing as a trusted personality or a well-known establishment. These have spread like wildfire across social media, with catfishes posing as celebrities to extort information and cash from unsuspecting fans.

Malware, short for Malicious Software, includes spyware, ransomware, and viruses. It is typically delivered over a network and infects the system intending to provide the attacker with remote access, send spam, investigate the infected system’s local network, or steal confidential information. The average amount of reported transactions per month from infected ransomware systems was $102.3 million in 2021 alone (Source: Forbes).

Nobody likes their private and confidential conversations discovered by others. The man-in-the-middle attack is the hushed eavesdrop of the digital world. The attacker listens in on and possibly alters the communications between two or more parties who believe they are communicating directly with each other. Though not as common as the others, MiTM still poses a threat to individuals and organizations alike, with 35% of cyber threats in 2018 being MiTM attacks (Source: IBM)

Every system improves on continuous user feedback, which means that when it is freshly deployed, it is the weakest. The fastest-growing cyber-attack, zero-day attacks, focuses on a system or software vulnerability unknown to the developers in the initial phase. As the hackers exploit a flaw before the developers catch it, they have zero days to fix the flaw before it is exposed to the public. In quarter one of 2021, 74% of cyber-threats were zero-day attacks capable of evading conventional antivirus (Source: WatchGuard). These attacks boast the highest success rate as well since no patch exists for the vulnerabilities to whose existence vendors are still oblivious.