Its Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and it's the perfect time to spotlight the growing importance of protecting your business from cyber threats. As they become more sophisticated, it’s crucial to stay informed and ready to defend against attacks. Here are some of the most common cyber threats businesses face today—and how to combat them.

What is a cyberattack?

A cyberattack is an attempt by cybercriminals, hackers or other digital adversaries to access a computer network or system, usually for the purpose of altering, stealing, destroying or exposing information. Cyberattacks can target a wide range of victims from individual users to enterprises or even governments. When targeting businesses or other organisations, the hacker’s goal is usually to access sensitive and valuable company resources, such as intellectual property (IP), customer data or payment details.

1. Phishing Attacks

Phishing is a social engineering attack where cybercriminals pose as trustworthy entities to trick users into revealing sensitive information, such as login credentials or financial details. These attacks are often delivered via email, with increasingly realistic tactics. How to Combat It:

• Implement email filtering tools to block suspicious messages.
• Train employees to recognise red flags in phishing emails, such as unusual email addresses, poor grammar, and urgent requests.
• Encourage multi-factor authentication (MFA) to add an extra layer of security.

2. Ransomware

Ransomware attacks encrypt a victim’s files or system, demanding a ransom for decryption. These attacks can bring businesses to a standstill, resulting in data loss, operational disruption, and financial damage. In a ransomware attack, an adversary encrypts a victim’s data and offers to provide a decryption key in exchange for a payment. Ransomware attacks are usually launched through malicious links delivered via phishing emails, but unpatched vulnerabilities and policy misconfigurations are used as well. How to Combat It:

• Regularly back up critical data, ensuring backups are stored offline or in a secure cloud environment.
• Keep software and security patches up to date to minimise vulnerabilities.
• Use advanced threat detection systems to identify and stop ransomware before it takes hold.

3. Insider Threats

IT teams that solely focus on finding adversaries external to the organisation only see half the picture. Insider threats are internal actors such as current or former employees that pose danger to an organisation because they have direct access to the company network, sensitive data, and IP as well as knowledge of business processes, company policies, or other information that would help carry out such an attack. Internal actors that pose a threat to an organisation tend to be malicious in nature. Some motivators include financial gain in exchange for selling confidential information on the dark web and/or emotional coercion such as the ones used in social engineering tactics. But some insider threats are not malicious in nature — instead, they are negligent. To combat this, organisations should implement a comprehensive cybersecurity training program that teaches stakeholders to be aware of any potential attacks, including those potentially performed by an insider. How to Combat It:

• Establish strict access controls, ensuring employees only have access to the information necessary for their roles.
• Implement user activity monitoring tools to detect unusual behaviour.
• Offer regular training to educate employees about security risks and safe online practices.

4.Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks

A Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack is a malicious, targeted attack that floods a network with false requests in order to disrupt business operations. In a DoS attack, users are unable to perform routine and necessary tasks, such as accessing email, websites, online accounts or other resources that are operated by a compromised computer or network. While most DoS attacks do not result in lost data and are typically resolved without paying a ransom, they cost the organisation time, money and other resources in order to restore critical business operations. The difference between DoS and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks has to do with the origin of the attack. DoS attacks originate from just one system while DDoS attacks are launched from multiple systems. DDoS attacks are faster and harder to block than DOS attacks because multiple systems must be identified and neutralised to halt the attack. How to Combat It:

• Use web application firewalls and DDoS protection services to absorb malicious traffic.
• Create an incident response plan to ensure quick action in case of an attack.
• Regularly test your infrastructure’s resilience to DDoS attacks.

5. Zero-Day Exploits

Zero-day exploits take advantage of software vulnerabilities that are unknown to the vendor. These attacks are particularly dangerous because there is no patch or defense until the vulnerability is discovered. How to Combat It:

• Keep systems and software updated to minimise exposure to vulnerabilities.
• Utilise advanced threat intelligence to detect unknown threats.
• Conduct regular vulnerability assessments and penetration tests to identify weak points.

6. Spoofing

Spoofing is a technique through which a cybercriminal disguises themselves as a known or trusted source. In so doing, the adversary is able to engage with the target and access their systems or devices with the ultimate goal of stealing information, extorting money or installing malware or other harmful software on the device. How to Combat It:

• Implement strong email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to help prevent email spoofing.
• Use firewalls and intrusion detection systems (IDS) to block suspicious traffic.
• Encourage employees to double-check suspicious requests before taking action.

7. Malware

Malware — or malicious software — is any program or code that is created with the intent to do harm to a computer, network or server. Malware is the most common type of cyberattack, mostly because this term encompasses many subsets such as ransomware, trojans, spyware, viruses, worms, keyloggers, bots, cryptojacking, and any other type of malware attack that leverages software in a malicious way. How to Combat It:

• Use robust antivirus and anti-malware solutions that are updated regularly.
• Train employees to avoid clicking on suspicious links or downloading untrusted files.
• Regularly update all systems and applications to patch vulnerabilities.

A comprehensive cybersecurity strategy is absolutely essential in today’s world. From a business perspective, securing the organisation’s digital assets has the obvious benefit of reducing the risk of loss, theft, destruction, and the potential need to pay a ransom to regain control of company data or systems. Employing a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy can help organisations prevent or quickly remediate cyberattacks and minimise the impact of these events on business operations. Finally, when an organisation takes steps to deter adversaries, it protects the brand from the reputational harm often associated with cyberattacks — especially those that involve the loss of customer data.