Incidents of business security and data breaches have been on the rise for the last few years. In fact, they increased more than ten-fold between the years of 2005 and 2017.
As a business owner, chances are you have concerns about protecting your business’s information and keeping your customers’ data safe. If you haven’t taken steps to prepare for and prevent security issues at your company, now is the time to start.
Read on to learn everything you can do to prepare for different types of security breaches at your business.
Most Common Types of Security Breaches
First, it’s important to understand the different types of security breaches that a business can experience. The following are some of the most common types of which you ought to be aware:
DoS and DDoS Attacks
DoS is short for denial-of-service. DDoS is short for distributed denial-of-service.
A DoS attack overwhelms your system’s resources. As a result, it can’t respond to service requests. DDoS attacks also attack the system’s resources, but they’re launched on several host machines, all of which are infected by one form of malware.
These attacks don’t directly benefit hackers. However, they can shut down operations or make it easier for the hacker to carry out another type of security breach.
Man-in-the-Middle Attacks
A man-in-the-middle (or MitM for short) attack involves a hacker inserting themselves between client-server communications.
An example of this type of attack is session hijacking. When this occurs, the hacker gets involved with the client-server communication and tricks the server into thinking it’s still communicating with the client.
By doing this, the hacker could gain important information about the client’s account.
Phishing and Spear Phishing
Phishing involves sending emails from an address that appears trustworthy. The goal is to get personal information from the email recipient.
Spear phishing is a very targeted form of phishing that’s carried out with the intent of gathering very specific pieces of information from a specific person.
Drive-by Download Attacks
A drive-by download attack is a common method that hackers will use to spread malware. Hackers target insecure websites and carry out these attacks by planting malicious script into the website code.
This can install malware onto the computer of the person visiting the site, or it can re-direct the person to a site the hacker controls.
Password Attacks
As the name suggests, password attacks involve gaining access to a person’s password to gain access to their information. There are two primary types of password attacks:
- Brute-force: This involves guessing passwords at random and hoping that one works
- Dictionary attack: This involves gaining access to a dictionary or list of possible passwords and testing them out one by one
Both options can give the hacker access to all kinds of sensitive information about the business, employees, and clients.
SQL Injection Attacks
An SQL (short for structured query language) injection attack involves inserting SQL queries into a database.
This allows the hacker to access sensitive data from a business’s database. They can also modify this data and execute administrative operations like shutdowns.
How to Prepare for These Breaches
Now that you know what type of security breaches are most likely affect your business, it’s time to start taking steps to protect yourself, your employees, and your customers.
Here are some effective steps you can take to prepare for breaches and keep them from happening:
Limit Data Access
One of the best steps you can take to prepare for and prevent breaches is to limit access to sensitive data.
The fewer people who have access to sensitive information, the less of a chance there is that it’ll fall into the wrong hands.
Be selective about who can handle certain types of information and make it clear that those who do have access to it are dealing with sensitive details.
Conduct Employee Training Sessions
Conduct training sessions on a regular basis so that employees know what to do to prevent data breaches. These sessions can include information about setting proper passwords and deleting or reporting emails that come from questionable senders.
Many employees, unless they work in IT or a related field, know next to nothing about data security, so regular training is key.
Perform Regular Software Updates
Hackers will often take advantage of users who have outdated software. Another simple way to reduce your risk of security breaches is to make sure you (and all of your employees) are updating your software on a regular basis.
Updating software helps to protect against security issues, fills in potential security gaps, and ensures your material is as safe as possible.
Create a Response Plan
Make sure you have a clear plan in place for what you’ll do should a security breach occur.
How will you address the issue? How will you make sure you lose as little data as possible?
Write your plan down and ensure everyone knows about it so they can act quickly.
Use the Right Passwords
Don’t forget to use secure passwords and encourage your workers to do the same. Keeping passwords complex and changing them on a regular basis will help to reduce the risk of password attacks and will help you to keep your important data safe.
Use a Professional Service
You may also want to work with a professional service, such as a Security Incident Response Service.
This kind of service can help you put a protocol in place for responding to data breaches. They can also conduct audits to look at your current setup and let you know if you’re vulnerable to certain security issues.
Start Protecting Your Business Today
As you can see, there are lots of different types of security breaches that can affect your business.
If you keep these preparation techniques in mind, though, and teach them to your staff, you’ll have a much easier time protecting your business and preventing serious (and expensive) issues from occurring.
Do you want to learn more about protecting and securing your business? If so, check out the Cyber Security section of our site today.