How to put a hold on hacks by fighting against cyber threats?

A cyber threat is a malicious act that attempts to steal data and damage data. Cyber threats include malware, phishing attacks, ransomware, zero-day exploits, data breaches, denial of service (DoS) attacks, computer viruses, and other attack vectors.

Cyber threats are also referred to as the possibility of a successful cyber-attack that aims to gain unauthorized access to a particular system or an individual and damage or steal sensitive information or a technology asset, computer network, intellectual property, or any other form of data. Cyber threats can also come from within an organization or from remote locations by an unknown party.

In today’s growing world, cyber security is more important than ever. With ever-growing threats to businesses, having a strong security solution is essential. Cybersecurity breaches are rapidly rising, and its impact is expected to grow up to 15.4 million by 2023. As growing technological advancements have made it easy for organizations to upgrade their security measures, but hackers are also using sophisticated tools. That means in addition to implementing strict cybersecurity policies, organizations are also needed to take proactive measures to reduce cybersecurity risks.

Preventive measures from Cyber-threats

Qualitative risk analysis is an analytical method that does not use numerical and quantitative ratings to identify and evaluate risks. A written definition of the uncertainties, an assessment of the extent of the impact (if the risk occurs), and countermeasure plans are all part of qualitative analysis.

A pre-defined scale is used in qualitative risk analysis to rate and prioritize identified risks by determining the risk occurrence probability on a zero-to-one scale. If the possibility of a risk occurring is a point five, the likelihood is 50%. If an impact occurs, it is rated on a scale of one to five, with five representing a certainty that the impact will occur. In finance, qualitative risk analysis can assist managers in minimizing risk occurrence or preventing high-impact risks. A company that wants to assess the impact of a security breach on its servers may employ a qualitative risk technique to help prepare for any lost revenue that may result from a data breach.

Quantitative Risk Analysis

Here are some of the measures that can be applied for the prevention of Cyber threats:

1. Training about cyber threat awareness to staff: One of the most common ways that cybercriminals get access to an organization's data is through its employees. They will send phishing emails impersonating someone in the organization and will either ask for personal details or access to certain files. Links often seem legitimate and when any employee clicks on the link, the attacker can get information or access to the system.
2. Hence, one of the most efficient ways to protect against cyber-attacks and all types of data breaches is to provide training to employees on cyber-attack prevention and inform them of current cyber-attacks.
   Employees need to:
   • Check the links before clicking on them
   • Check email addresses from the received email
   • Use common sense before sending sensitive information. If a request seems odd, it is better to check via a phone call with the person in question before sending the request.
3. Software and systems should be fully up to date: Often cyber-attacks happen because the systems or software are not fully up to date in the organization. Hence, cybercriminals exploit these weaknesses to gain access to an organization's network or system. Once cybercriminals gain access to the system – it is often too late to take preventative action.  To counter this, it is best to invest in a patch management system that will manage all software and system updates which keeps the organization's system safe and up to date.
4. Ensure Endpoint Protection:Endpoint protection protects the networks that are remotely connected to the devices. Security threats gain access paths through mobile devices, tablets, and laptops that are connected to corporate networks. These paths must be protected with specific endpoint protection software.
5. Installation of firewalls: Putting a firewall on the network is one of the most effective ways to defend from any cyber-attack. A firewall system will block any brute-force attacks made on the organization's network or system before they can do any damage.
6. Data Backup: The organization must have their data backed up to avoid serious downtime, loss of data, and serious financial loss before the incident happen.
7. Putting access control to the system: One of the attacks that the organization can receive on its systems can be physical, having control over who can access the organization's network is more important. Somebody can simply walk into the office and plug in a USB that contains infected files into one of the computers allowing them access to the entire network and infecting the whole system. Hence, it is essential to control who has access to the organization's systems. One of the proper ways to stop cybercrime is to install a perimeter security system.
8. Access Management: One of the risks for the organization is employees installing software on business-owned devices that could compromise the whole system. Having properly managed admin rights and blocking the employee from installing or even accessing certain data on the network will be more beneficial.
9. Strong Password Policy should be implemented: Having the same password set up for everything can be dangerous. Once a hacker finds out the password, they can access everything in the system and any application used in an organization. Having different passwords and a strong password policy setup for every application can be beneficial to the organization’s security, and changing them at certain intervals of time will maintain a high level of protection against internal and external threads.

Cybercrime has now become a new trend in today’s technological world. The cyber threat for the organization is more devastating situation regarding their customer or own data. For the protection of cyber threats following prevention methods can be adopted: At first, prevention comes through an individual i.e., an employee himself, therefore, staff training should be conducted for security awareness along with software update, endpoint protection, access management, and password policy must be implemented to fight against cyber threats.