What is Breaching and can it affect your Jacksonville business
What is Breaching and can it affect your Jacksonville business? A cyber security breach occurs when an intruder gains unauthorized access to a business’ or organization’s protected systems and data. It’s the digital equivalent of someone bypassing your home’s security, while a data breach is the equivalent of someone stealing documents from your house after the break in.
These types of attacks happen every day across the world. Whether it’s a small business in Jacksonville or a Fortune 500 company, cyber criminals continue to evolve their tactics to gain access to protected systems and cause havoc and steal valuable data.
In fact, corporate giants Yahoo, Equifax and Facebook were breached in 2016, 2017 and 2018, respectively. In the case of the Yahoo breach, 3 billion user accounts were hacked, putting countless sensitive materials at risk. 145 million Equifax users were exposed, causing massive data breaches of names, birth dates, addresses, social security numbers and even driver’s license numbers.
These kinds of security breaches occur far too often, because cyber criminals can use a variety of means to bypass your security. Here’s a list of common types of breaching to be on the lookout for.
COMMON SECURITY BREACHES
• Ransomware, viruses and other forms of malware
These attacks often come via malicious emails and downloads from the Internet. This could be an attachment that contains malware, such as ransomware. Opening the attachment can infect your computer or network with malware, which can do everything from stealing data to blocking access to it for ransom.
You can also be attacked by downloading infected programs. Once you open or run the malicious program, malware such as a virus, can quickly spread to other computers on your network.
• Denial of service attacks
In this type of security breach, hackers can overwhelm your security and make it difficult or impossible to do business by flooding your website with traffic. Motives range from activism to extortion, and government and financial websites are often targeted.
• Impersonation of a business or organization
Cyber criminals are sophisticated and quite clever. This is often demonstrated by tricking the victim into thinking they are a legitimate business or organization, allowing them to bypass their security protocols.
Convincing phishing malware emails are sent out to potential marks that purport to be from a known source, such as a company executive or a business with which the victim does business. The email will urgently ask for sensitive information that can be used to create chaos, damage reputations or extort money. A common scheme is for phishing emails to contain links to fake websites, like a well-known bank’s, and trick the user to enter their username and password.
The more convincing the email, the more likely the hacker is to steal the information they seek. They can also target someone directly, like the employee of a small Jacksonville business, or they can send out millions of emails indiscriminately.
PROTECT YOUR JACKSONVILLE BUSINESS
Now you know what breaching is and how it can affect your Jacksonville business. The best way to protect your business or organization is to fight back with professional cyber security services. If you’re the victim of a cyber attack or want to shield yourself from potential security breaches, you can count on the full-service support at Workforce IT of Jacksonville. 904.638.8406.
