Verizon Enterprise Solutions’ Data Breach Investigation Report 2018 found that almost 60% of the victims of data breach victims have been small and medium enterprises. The report is a comprehensive resource because its statistics cover the data gathered from more than 50,000 cybercriminal incidents involving over 2,300 data breaches worldwide.

 

Notable Statistics

The personal data stored by organizations has been the main target of cybercriminals. The main culprits are outside third parties, criminal organizations, internal staff members, foreign countries, and business partners. The breaches primarily involve information related to personal data (36%), financial payments (34%), and banking data (13%). 9 out of 10 malware attacks had an email aspect for its method of delivery.

Main Threats

• Cybercriminals use a ‘backdoor’ portal to infiltrate a computer server by bypassing authentication and other standard security procedures and mechanisms.

• Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) is a cyberattack intended to render a machine or network resource unavailable through disrupting the services of a host connected to the Internet.

• Phishing occurs when a cybercriminal poses as a trustworthy individual from a familiar organization in order to secure sensitive information.

• Pretexting is a social engineering technique where a cybercriminal typically researches a target and then employs this knowledge to enable manipulation or impersonation intended to trick an individual into revealing their sensitive or confidential information.

• Ransomware works by being illicitly installed in a computer, and then the cybercriminal encrypts and locks the system. This prevents the user from accessing its data. The user’s access is only restored after paying a ransom fee.

Part 2 will discuss essential steps for greatly improving your company’s cybersecurity.

Alpha Engineering Business Support

Choosing an expert computer technology-support provider is an important decision for your business. Alpha Engineering Associates has been a trusted partner of many companies in the Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis areas since 1990 and offer:

• 24/7 Managed Services for Business Computing Systems

• Network and Mobile Computing Support

• Disaster Recovery Planning

• Software Development

For affordable client-focused network consulting services and solutions, please call Alpha Engineering Associates today at (410) 295-9500.