Effective Methods of Tackling Modern Cybersecurity Threats

Most organizations are migrating towards adopting cloud technologies, meaning that they essentially operate in cyberspace, so the risk of cyber attacks is now higher than ever.

In recent years, organizations have begun to pay more attention to this threat, as the company faces a substantial loss with every attack. As these become more and more common, they have the potential to make a significant dent in overall expenses.

Over the past decade, technology has reached many previously unimaginable milestones. However, as tech advances, the sophistication and frequency of cyber threats have also risen exponentially. This article details some of the most common cybersecurity threats and the most effective methods of handling them.

Prominent Cyber Threats in the Current Market

Cybersecurity threats cover various areas, depending on what data needs access. The most common cyber threats companies face today are spoofing and lateral movement attacks.

Spoofing

Website spoofing means a website's entire UI/UX part is cloned into a fake version hosted on compromised servers and suspicious cloud services. The spoofed website looks identical to the original, misleading users who will assume that they have landed on the actual site and trust it with their personal information. This could expose them to monetary losses, identity theft, and other such risks.

The problem with spoofing is that it is very difficult to identify. Either the end user(s) have to bring it to the company’s attention, or the company has to notice it using advanced analytics tools like Memcyco’s solution, built explicitly for digital brands to solve this particular issue. The software provides each website with a unique, non-forgeable watermark, which makes it impossible to replicate.

Lateral Movement Attacks

Cyber attacks generally target one entry point, but a lateral movement attack focuses on multiple access points by moving across compromised systems or networks of systems. This way, the attackers can spread their influence across not just one but multiple areas, control these influenced areas, and quickly access data from multiple points. Despite technological advancements, lateral movement attacks are complicated to identify, making this a huge blind spot in cyber security policies.

Identifying Cyber Threats

Threat detection is crucial for businesses, as it helps them to identify and prevent potential cyber threats. Below are some of the most popular techniques to identify and overcome cyber threats.

Proof of Source Authenticity

Proof of Source Authenticity (PoSA) is one of the best methods to identify and prevent website spoofing. Before consuming information from websites–or worse, trusting websites with your own information–it’s crucial to know that the site is authentic. Companies affected by spoofing or brandjacking attacks lose customer engagement and trust and face huge business losses. 

Memcyco provides an end-to-end solution that automatically identifies access points in real-time whenever a website is subject to spoofing attacks. Upon detecting a spoofing threat, the clients are notified immediately and offered an in-depth insight into the attack.

Anomaly Detection

Anomaly detection refers to identifying and monitoring ‘out of the blue’ activities, deploying tools to recognize unexpected behavior patterns across various organisation sectors, such as cyber-attacks, network errors, system errors, and technical glitches and bugs.

Establishing an anomaly detection service for security teams will help businesses identify points of failure or security breaches by providing real-time visibility into strange activity.

Sandboxing

Sandboxing–creating an isolated testing environment that mimics the features of the user interface–is one of the best methods to find and fix potential points of failure. As sandbox environments are separate from the main platform, it is easier to implement fixes and test new methods for handling points of failure. This can then be applied to the real website.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Before identifying and utilizing the capabilities of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, organizations used a rule-based approach to pick up on abnormalities and threats. However, this rule-based method, being predefined, couldn’t keep up with the ever-evolving realm of cyber threats and attacks. With AI and ML, machines can be trained with huge data models to recognize patterns that indicate malicious attacks in a faster and optimized way. This gives organizations the time to act on the threats and resolve the issues quickly.

Preventing Cybersecurity Threats

Over the past few years, governments and regulatory bodies have taken massive steps towards improving the cybersecurity sector, such as developing a globally acceptable standard to keep up with the advancement of cyber threats and protect against them. Healthcare and financial sectors, for example, will benefit from adhering to standard cybersecurity measures, as they have sensitive financial and personal information about their clients. According to a survey, more than 80% of leaders in the banking industry have expressed concerns about growing cybersecurity threats.

Companies must be able to stay compliant with current regulations and ready to adhere to future requirements with minimal changes in infrastructure and impact on their day-to-day business. Incorporating solutions like Memcyco will not only help recognize security threats that can cause data and financial loss but also help stay compliant with any changes in regulations. To implement this solution, you don't need to have extensive training. A few lines of code into the existing infrastructure will be enough to use this solution. In addition to being incredibly easy to integrate, it does not affect the end-users in any way.

It is essential to understand that cybersecurity will always be a battlefield: as the technology evolves, so do methods of cybercrime. The dynamic nature of cyber attacks makes it even more critical for companies to employ threat intelligence and protect their data. Moreover, identifying and tackling these threats requires the right tools and technologies. This is where cybersecurity service providers play a vital role in protecting businesses and their data. Companies should invest in choosing the right solution provider that best suits their business needs and purposes.