05 Sep 5 Potential Computer Security Threats to Businesses in 2020
The twenty-first century has experienced major digital revolutions of human history. Besides all the benefits, it has also exposed a long list of unprecedented security issues that pose grave threats to the security of businesses. Phishing attacks, website hijacking, SQL Injection, Sensitive Data Breaches, and this list of computer security threats and attacks never end. However, in this article, we will cover five major computer security threats for businesses trending in 2020. These five include End Point Security for Remote Workers, Mobile Malware, Insider Attacks, Cloud Jacking, and API Vulnerabilities. Enterprises need to be very cautious about what they are storing online and their sensitive data and procedures because:
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and a few minutes of cyber-incident to ruin it.
― Stephane Nappo
Organizations must need to prepare themselves to face these challenges. For this, we will also discuss some strategies to cope up with threats at the end of this article. But let us first dig into the basic cybersecurity concerns for businesses to have a clearer understanding.
Computer Security Threats and Business Concerns
The data of an organization has equal value as that of physical assets. It is equally important for an organization to protect its data from cybersecurity threats. Organizations are striving hard to protect their data from security breaches. Various organizational concerns are raised as a result. Here are some of the major computer security concerns that are trending in 2020:
1. Avoid Threats
Preparation is the first and foremost requirement to face any cybersecurity challenge. Businesses need to avoid computer security threats, and for this, they need to prepare themselves. Technology is evolving every second, and cybersecurity attacks are becoming advance, more sophisticated, and hard to detect. They are no more obvious and simple as used to be in the past. To identify and avoid them, a business must need to incorporate the latest security solution.
Businesses need to stay safe on the internet as well as offline. Because their basic concern is to avoid threats that are dangerous for their business security.
2. Ensure Compliance
There was a time when organizations took regulatory compliance as a part of a security audit only. But with the evolution of computer security threats, these compliances will be more proactive in shaping the organizational policies. Possibilities are there that regulatory compliance will become a new normal for all the organizations regardless of their size. For the protection of the digital ecosystem of a business, proactive monitoring, and anomaly detection is required. Being compliant with regulatory standards will become a great concern for organizations.
3. Business Growth in a Secure Manner
Growing the business has always been a major concern for every organization. In this advanced era of technology, growth includes shifting towards the cloud, the transformation of hardware asses to virtual resources, applying hybrid strategies, and things like that. Such growth for an organization during 2020 might pose a security risk to organizational assets. Businesses need to seriously think before implementing any growth strategy that the strategy has high-level security strategies.
Five Major Computer Security Threats
Computer security threats, if exploited, have the potential to put you out of business. The severity and consequences of cybersecurity are grave dangers for your business. Let us see 5 possible computer security threats to businesses in 2020:
1. End Point Security for Remote Workers
Remote workers are work from an environment where no network security perimeter is applied. They are connected to the outside world using their home network. In this way, they are missing a layer of cybersecurity defense that they have inside the premises of an organization, posing a serious threat to the organization’s security. Various types of cybersecurity attacks like phishing through mobile devices, data breaches, and side-channel attacks, etc., happen due to off-premises assets and mobile devices.
2. Mobile Malware
Mobile malware is such a malicious software that targets the mobile operating system. These malware travel from device to device and may spread among all the mobile devices connected through a network. More and more data is stored on mobile devices these days due to portability and availability instead of desktop devices. Mobile malware takes advantage of this practice and targets mobile devices.
3. Insider Attacks
From the past few years, the number of insider attacks on organizations is growing rapidly. This not only includes malicious attacks from insiders but also in skirts using the system or data negligently or mishandling the data. Such carelessness could result in a large data breach. As insiders are free from Antimalware or Antivirus detection and these protocols are ineffective on insiders, organizations need to be cautious while defining their security policies from them. Special tools with machine learning and artificial intelligence tools can be used to detect and respond to such anomalies.
4. Cloud Jacking
In 2020, the trend of migrating to the cloud is increasing exponentially. Organizations are shifting their data from physical storage to cloud storage because of its increased flexibility and enhanced security.
Misconfiguration of the cloud may end into very harmful consequences for an organization. Malicious attackers from third-party services may inject malicious code using SQL injection or cross-site scripting. In this way, the attacker will be able to eavesdrop all the communication. Also, he might be able to hijack the cloud using such malicious scripts. Therefore, organizations need to be very careful during the configuration of the cloud.
5. API Vulnerabilities
Nowadays, organizations are providing APIs (Application Programming Interface) to the outside developers so that with a mere link, they can jump into their ecosystem or software platform. As more and more organizations adopt to provide API of their software platform to the external developers, the year 2020 has exposed APIs as the weakest link to explode an organization’s security. This approach may give a major set back to businesses. Businesses need to rethink about this API culture while defining their organization’s security policy.
Strategies to deal with Computer Security Threats
We have seen computer security concerns of businesses and the threats to businesses. Now we will discuss some of the strategies to deal with computer security threats. It is pertinent to mention here that absolute security is impossible to achieve. However, we can apply multiple layers of security to provide maximum security to a system. Here are some of the approaches:
1. Patch Management
Keep your patches up to date and automate patch management. This will keep you protected from cyber threats. Patches of IoT devices must be updated with each patch update. This saves the organization from a number of cybersecurity attacks.
2. Maintaining Backups
Backups are a way to recover from a cyberattack. Businesses need to maintain a complete backup of their data for emergency situations. There are various types of backups depending upon the needs of the organization. One can choose backup according to the requirements of the organization.
3. Installation of AM/AV
Antimalware and Antivirus (AM/AV) provide basic endpoint security to keep your organization’s systems secure. Make sure that you install AM/AV on every node of the network. This will help to detect malware on each node connected to the organization’s network either physically or virtually.
4. Audit and Log Management
Audit and log management helps to detect anomalous behavior in the network. This will help organizations to trackback the activities of everyone who is in the network or who tried to enter the network. It also helps to know the activities of employees so that insider attacks could be traced and avoided. Log management is crucial for an organization. Organizations need to think wisely about what to write logs and what not to. These log reports help in the audit process as well.
5. Preparation of an IRP
Incident Response Plan or IRP explains the organization’s policy to deal with a security breach. It must be robust and efficient to handle a security breach with minimum cost and fast recovery. It is a way to handle the crisis in advance. All internal and external stakeholders, customers, and investors should be catered in the Incidence Response Plan. The more efficiently you design your IRP, the easier it becomes to handle a cyberattack.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, we have discovered different computer security concerns, threats, and strategies to cope with cybersecurity attacks. There are always loopholes in the security of an organization because it is impossible to achieve 100% security. We can apply multifarious layers of security to minimize the effects of cyberattacks. Businesses must need to maintain a backup of their data, manage detailed logs of the activities in the network, place firewalls at different points of the network, make an annual or bi-annual security audit, train employees to use the organization’s systems properly, and have some physical controls like watchdogs as well.
Above all these, there should be a proper Incidence Response Plan that deals efficiently with a computer security threat and attack. These strategies will mitigate, transfer, and avoid cybersecurity attacks. Businesses need to implement most of these strategies or look for some others suitable and affordable for their organization to deal with computer security threats and minimize risks of the data breach.
