BTC Broadband’s Guide to Cybersecurity

Phishing

Phishing attacks are a form of cybercrime that uses fraudulent emails, messages, or websites to deceive individuals into divulging sensitive information, such as their login credentials or financial data.

These attacks are often designed to look like legitimate communications from trustworthy sources, but they are malicious attempts to steal personal information. Attackers can steal identities, commit financial fraud, or gain illegitimate access to sensitive systems and data.

Ransomware

Ransomware is a form of malware that prevents users from accessing their files. It encrypts files on the user’s system and demands payment for decryption. Ransomware can be spread in many ways, including email attachments, phishing scams, and malicious downloads.

Once a user’s files have been encrypted, the only way to regain access is to pay the ransom, often demanded in cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. Paying the ransom does not guarantee that the attacker will provide the decryption key, resulting in the loss of both data and money.

Insider Threats

Insider threats are a serious but often overlooked concern for organizations. They involve individuals who use their position and knowledge to exploit or compromise the organization’s security. These individuals can be employees, contractors, or partners who know the organization’s systems and processes.

Insider threats may occur intentionally or unintentionally, but they can cause significant damage to the organization’s reputation, financial standing, and overall security posture. Therefore, organizations need to have measures in place to ensure the safety of their assets and data.

 DDoS Attacks
(Distributed Denial of Service)

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks are digital attacks that involve flooding a system, service, or network with an enormous amount of traffic from multiple sources. This flood of traffic causes overwhelming requests to be sent to the targeted system, leading to its temporary or even permanent unavailability.

The goal of a DDoS attack is to obstruct the normal functioning of the targeted service, causing inconvenience to the user and financial loss to the organization.

Malware

Malware refers to harmful software specifically designed to exploit or damage computer systems. This includes viruses that can spread and infect other files, worms that can replicate themselves and spread across networks, and trojans that can disguise themselves as legitimate software while causing harm to the system they infect.

These types of software can cause significant damage to computer systems and expose sensitive data to unauthorized access.

Credential Stuffing

Credential stuffing is a method where hackers use many stolen usernames and passwords to gain unauthorized access to user accounts on different platforms or services. This attack works by exploiting the fact that many people reuse the same login credentials repeatedly on multiple sites, making it easier for the attackers to access their other accounts.

The attackers use automated tools to test these stolen credentials on various websites until they find a match, giving them access to the victim’s account. This practice seriously threatens online security and can lead to severe financial loss and identity theft.

Password Hygiene

Password hygiene refers to the practices that ensure passwords are strong, secure, and resistant to standard attack methods. Good password hygiene involves creating complex passwords, regularly updating them, and ensuring they are unique across different accounts and services.

Network Security

Network security involves policies, processes, and technologies that prevent unauthorized access, misuse, modification, or denial of network resources in response to cyber threats.

Data Protection

Data protection involves implementing measures and technologies to safeguard data from unauthorized access, corruption, or theft throughout its lifecycle. It includes a range of tasks, from securing data against cyber threats to ensuring compliance with various regulatory requirements.

Endpoint Security

Endpoint security refers to securing the entry points of end-user devices, including desktops, laptops, and mobile devices, to prevent bad actors from targeting them.

Incident Response Plan

An Incident Response Plan is a structured methodology for handling and managing the aftermath of a security breach or cyber-attack. Its primary goal is limiting damage and reducing recovery time and costs. An effective IRP provides clear, concise, well-documented procedures and processes to detect, respond to, and recover from cyber threats.