Hacking isn’t quite as flashy as in the movies and it takes a major time investment on the criminal’s part, however it is every bit as damaging and threatening to companies as it is portrayed and, as recent history has shown, there are criminals who are willing to invest the time necessary to embarrass companies and cause them significant losses. This type of hacker is known as a black hat hacker. Hacking is not always done maliciously, however. White hat hackers conduct such operations to help companies, informing them of their vulnerabilities and fixing them. Then, there are grey hat companies, which walk the line in between. One of the world’s most famous hackers, Albert Gonzales, nicknamed the “soup nazi”, engaged in cyber crime from a young age. He was arrested for debit card fraud having stolen millions of dollars. Although he at first was let off for working for the Secret Service, he again indulged in the first serial credit information breach using a basic SQL injection. His subsequent thefts totaled in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

A long prevalent method of penetrating companies’ systems is the business e-mail attack, or BEC attack. In business e-mails, malicious individuals frequently present themselves as social media websites, employees such as CEOs holding high up positions in the company, or company partners. The perpetrator sometimes spoofs the social media website, requesting the employee to enter his login credentials and gaining access to the network. He may also ask the employee to download a link, enabling him to install malicious content on the victim’s computer. One of the most popular attacks in recent years has been ransomware. 

How to Prevent Ransomware

A ransomware attack results from an individual or employee downloading content, usually from his e-mail address, after which the perpetrator locks the victim out of his computer, demanding a ransom to unlock it. Last year, the Baltimore ransomware attack left the city government without e-mail, telecommunications, and bill payment operation capabilities, from which the city still suffers. The culprit was known as RobbinHood Ransomware. Another incident, Texas ransomware attack, first targeted the Texas state court system and later its department of transportation. The courts’ case management systems were lost and court offices were paralyzed. The best way to prevent it is by installing awesome cybersecurity and preventing it from happening in the first place, regularly creating secure data backup, and keep your software updated, and establish policy that you ensure your employees remain in strict compliance with. Further compounding ransomware protection concerns has been a different growing, more popular phenomenon – cryptojacking.

How to Prevent Cryptojacking

Cryptojacking is the practice of tricking employees into downloading a link that enables the malware’s architect to install software, enabling him to steal the company server’s operating power for cryptocurrency mining. The only sign of this phenomenon that employees may or may not notice is slow operation speed, high electricity bills, as well as rapid overheating. Some of the main ways to target and prevent such schemes include continually educating employees on the latest schemes, installing ad-blocking, and adding anti-cryptomining extensions on web browsers.

How to Stop a DDOS Attack

Some individuals, both competitors and spiteful evildoers, employ an offensive called a distributed denial of service attack, or DDOS attack. DDOS entail the perpetrator sending large numbers of false requests from a vast number of IP addresses to an organization’s website for the sole purpose of using up its server power in order to prevent legitimate site visitors or customers from being able to use it. To prevent such attacks, an organization must identify such cyberattacks early, acquire more bandwidth than necessary, and create a sequence of steps to take in the event that DDOS attacks take place. If those measures fail the company should call its hosting provider for assistance or call a DDOS mitigation specialist.