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Cyber security threats: risks that businesses must be prepared for

Cyber security threats continue to be a major challenge for individuals and businesses around the world. Cybercrime, costs globally more than $6 trillion annually, according to
Annual Cybercrime Report 2020
.

To put this in perspective, if cybercrime were a country, it would be the third largest global economy after the US and China.

Since the pandemic in early 2020, many cybercriminals have changed the way they operate. This is because the change in working practices, such as the home office, presented many security vulnerabilities that these criminals quickly exploited.

In 2022, the cybersecurity threat landscape will continue to evolve as many companies return to pre-pandemic working practices, while still maintaining some of the flexible working arrangements they adopted in 2020.

This highlights the importance of understanding what the main cybersecurity risks of 2022 will be and what your company can do to mitigate these risks.

Cyber security threats will continue to increase in 2022 if robust measures are not taken

According to Gartner, organizations that adopt a cybersecurity architecture can reduce the financial impact of security incidents by an average of 90%.

The top 5 types of cybersecurity threats that everyone should consider and be aware of in 2022 are listed below:

1. Ransomware

According to Cybersecurity Ventures, the cost of cybercrime from ransomware attacks is expected to reach $265 billion by 2031.

The report predicts that there will be a new attack every 2 seconds as cybercriminals progressively refine their malware payloads and related extortion activities.

In this type of cybercrime, the victim’s computer is locked, usually by encryption, preventing them from using the device and everything stored on it.

To regain access to the device, the victim needs to pay a ransom, usually in the form of virtual currency.

There are different types of transmission of such threats. However, most of the time, ransomware spreads via malicious email attachments, infected software applications, compromised websites or infected external storage.

2. Internal threats

This is one of the most common types of cybersecurity threats. It usually occurs when employees, intentionally or unintentionally, misuse authorized access in a way that negatively affects the organization’s system.

In most of these cybercrime cases, it is due to non-compliance with the organization’s policies and procedures. As such, they are prone to emailing customer data to third parties or sharing their login information with others.

These types of attacks would bypass cybersecurity protocols to delete, sell or steal data. This can disrupt operations and cause major damage to data.

3. Phishing attacks

Phishing attacks are one of the most prevalent cybersecurity threats in today’s business environment.

According to Verizon’s 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), phishing is the top “variety of action” seen in breaches in 2020, with 43% of breaches involving phishing and/or pretexting.

Phishing aims to trick users into compromising important and confidential information. Typically, attackers use fake emails that look trustworthy or from legitimate sources.

The main idea is to make users perform some actions (e.g. clicking on a link or opening email attachments) that allow attackers to install malware on their devices.

4. Attacks in the cloud

The cloud has become a critical part of our everyday life. However, we should be aware that not all cloud services provide secure authentication and encryption.

Incorrect configuration can cause cybercrime, including intrusions, network vulnerabilities and data leaks.

According to IBM, more than half of the breaches threats to cybersecurity in the cloud are caused by simple issues. While, two-thirds of cloud security incidents can be prevented by checking configurations.

5. Malvertising attacks

Malicious advertising, also known as malvertising, is an emerging new form of cybercrime.

Through this technique, cybercriminals inject malicious code into digital ads that redirect users to malicious websites or install malware on their devices.

It is very difficult to be identified by internet users and editors. Thus, they are usually served to consumers through legitimate advertising networks. Any advertisement displayed on websites may present a risk of infection.

Even some world-renowned companies have inadvertently displayed malicious ads on their websites.

More cyber attacks related to COVID-19

Cybercriminals quickly exploited the pandemic, using it as a pretext for phishing emails, fake apps and interesting links to malicious websites.

As 2022 progresses, there are likely to be more COVID-19 related developments around the world, new variants, vaccine news and booster dose offers for example.

Cybercriminals are eager to exploit these developments to continue tricking company employees into downloading malicious software or providing sensitive information that can be used for cybercrime.

CipherTrust enables businesses to protect their structure against cybersecurity threats

According to IDC, more than 175 zetabytes of data will be created by 2025, and today more than half of all corporate data is stored in the cloud.

To handle the complexity of where data is stored, CipherTrust Data Security Platform provides strong capabilities to protect and control access to sensitive data in databases, files, and containers. Specific technologies include:

CipherTrust Transparent Encryption

Encrypt data in on-premises, cloud, database, file, and Big Data environments with comprehensive access controls and detailed data access audit logging that can prevent the most malicious attacks.

CipherTrust Database Protection

It provides transparent column-level encryption of structured and confidential data that resides in databases such as credit card, social security numbers, national identification numbers, passwords, and e-mail addresses.

CipherTrust Application Data Protection

It offers APIs for developers to quickly add encryption and other cryptographic functions to their applications, while SecOps controls the encryption keys.

CipherTrust Tokenization

It offers application-level data tokenization services in two convenient solutions that provide customer flexibility – Token without Vault with dynamic policy-based data masking and Tokenization in Vault.

CipherTrust Batch Data Transformation

Provides static data masking services to remove sensitive information from production databases, so that compliance and cybersecurity issues are alleviated when sharing a database of information with a third party for analysis, testing or other processing.

CipherTrust Manager

It centralizes keys, management policies, and data access for all CipherTrust Data Security Platform products and is available in FIPS 140-2 Level 3 compliant physical and virtual formats.

CipherTrust Cloud Key Manager

It offers its own key lifecycle management (BYOK) for many cloud infrastructure, platform, and software-as-a-service providers.

CipherTrust KMIP Server

It centralizes key management for the Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) commonly used in storage solutions.

CipherTrust TDE Key Manager

Centralizes key management for encryption found in Oracle, SQL and Always Encrypted SQL.

The portfolio of data protection products that make up the CipherTrust Data Security Platform solution enables companies to protect data at rest and in motion across the entire IT ecosystem and ensures that the keys to this information are always protected and only under your control.

It simplifies data cybersecurity, improves operational efficiency, and accelerates compliance time. Regardless of where your data resides.

The CipherTrust platform ensures that your data is secure, with a wide range of proven, industry-leading products and solutions for deployment in data centers, either those managed by cloud service providers (CSPs) or managed service providers (MSPs), or as a cloud-based service managed by Thales, a leading security company.

Tool portfolio that ensures data protection

With data protection products from the CipherTrust Data Security Platform, your company can:

Strengthen cybersecurity and compliance

CipherTrust data protection products and solutions address the demands of a range of security and privacy requirements, including electronic identification, authentication and trust, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), General Data Protection Law (LGPD), among other compliance requirements.

Optimizes team and resource efficiency

CipherTrust Data Security Platform offers the broadest support for data security use cases in the industry, with products designed to work together, a single line for global support, a proven track record of protecting against evolving threats, and the industry’s largest ecosystem of data security partnerships.

With a focus on ease of use, APIs for automation, and responsive management, the CipherTrust Data Security Platform solution ensures that your teams can quickly deploy, secure, and monitor the protection of your business.

In addition, professional services and partners are available for design, implementation, and training assistance to ensure fast and reliable implementations with minimal staff time.

Reduces total cost of ownership

CipherTrust Data Security Platform’s data protection portfolio offers a broad set of data security products and solutions that can be easily scaled, expanded for new use cases, and have a proven track record of protecting new and traditional technologies.

With CipherTrust Data Security Platform, companies can prepare their investments for the future while reducing operating costs and capital expenditures.

About EVAL

With a track record of leadership and innovation dating back to 2004, Eval not only keeps up with technological trends, but we are also in an incessant quest to bring news by offering solutions and services that make a difference to people’s lives.

With value recognized by the market, EVAL’s solutions and services meet the highest regulatory standards of public and private organizations, such as SBIS, ITI, PCI DSS, and LGPD. In practice, we promote information security and compliance, increase companies’ operational efficiency, and reduce costs.

Innovate now, lead always: get to know Eval’s solutions and services and take your company to the next level.

Eval safety is value.

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