Cyber Threats and Vulnerabilities

Overview

Introduction to cyber security threats

The landscape of cyber threats is becoming more complex and dangerous by the day. Traditional cyber threats like viruses and malware seem almost tame next to advanced cyber hacking attacks like ransomware, impersonation fraud and spear-phishing.

The impact of cyber threats on businesses

Cyber threats can have a serious impact on businesses of all sizes, including financial and reputational damage. The impact can vary depending on the severity of the attack. There are, however, a few common consequences associated with a successful cyber attack:

Financial loss – cyber attacks can cause serious financial damage to a business, e.g. through the theft of data, which was one of the original types of cyber attacks, that has evolved in size and sophistication; revenue loss due to downtime; and the costs associated with recovering from a cyber attack.
Reputational damage – as a consequence of a successful cyber attack, customers and partners can quickly lose trust, especially if sensitive information such as customer or financial information is compromised in a data breach.
Business operation disruption – cyber attacks can cause unpredictable downtime, leading to loss in productivity and revenue.
Legal and regulatory issues – companies may face these issues, if they fail to protect sensitive data or comply with data protection regulations.

Mitigate cyber threats with a cyber resilience strategy

As companies consider how best to address cyber threats, cyber security firms are recommending strategies for cyber resilience. This approach to cyber security acknowledges that stopping every cyber security attack is unlikely, and instead focuses on ensuring business continuity and mitigating the impact of successful cyber threats.

Because most cyber threats begin with an email, the key to cyber resilience is having superior cyber solutions for email security and continuity. For companies seeking the most effective and cost-efficient cyber resilience solutions, Mimecast provides a comprehensive suite of cyber security software services.

Steps to protecting your business from cyber threats

Conducting a cybersecurity assessment to start with, can help you understand your current security posture, the threats your business faces, and prioritize areas that require your immediate attention or more focus.
Knowing who can access your systems and data is key – implementing strong access controls is crucial in order to prevent unauthorized access. This step could include introducing the use of multi-factor authentication (MFA), educating your employees about the importance of password hygiene and safe browsing habits, and assigning different user roles, making sure that employees have access only to information and systems they need to do their jobs.
Training your employees about cybersecurity best practices is a key element to protecting your business from cyber threats. More often than not, human error plays a role in successful cyber attacks, so it’s crucial for organizations to protect their weakest link in cybersecurity.

By prioritizing these steps, organizations can move closer to creating a strong cyber resilience strategy, and ultimately, reduce the risk of cyber threats and potential damage. While these steps are important, protecting your business against the ever-changing cyber threat landscape is an ongoing process.

Best practices for protecting against cyber threats

Some general best practices for protecting your business against cyber threats include:

Backing up your data
Securing your devices and network
Encrypting data
Using multi-factor authentication (MFA)
Enforcing strong password hygiene
Utilizing employee awareness training
Staying up-to-date on the latest cyber threats
Developing a cyber resilience strategy

Addressing cyber threats with Mimecast

Mimecast's all-in-one subscription service provides powerful tools to stop cyber threats to email security while ensuring email availability and continuity. Built on a cloud architecture, Mimecast's SaaS-based services simplify email management and support a robust cyber resilience strategy.

With Mimecast, you can:

Prevent cyber threats. Mimecast advanced security services use sophisticated threat intelligence and patented threat detection technology to prevent cyber threats from impacting business operations.
Deliver continuous access to email. When primary email servers go down – due to an attack, a disaster, human error or technical failure – Mimecast continuity services ensure that users can continue to send and receive email and to access historic email and attachments.
Keep email safe and available. Mimecast's multipurpose archive stores data from email, files and IM conversations in the cloud. By replicating email data, Mimecast ensures data integrity and speeds backup and recovery. And by making archiving easy, Mimecast simplifies compliance and e-discovery, as well as email search and retrieval.
Empower end-users. Because employees are often the most vulnerable point in the security chain, Mimecast provides tools and training that help to improve cyber security awareness and make users more vigilant defenders against cyber threats.

Benefits of Mimecast solutions for stopping cyberthreats

When you rely on Mimecast to help thwart cyber threats and promote cyber resilience, you can:

Reduce the cost of cyber resilience with a cloud-based service that lets you avoid purchasing and maintaining on-premise hardware and software.
Eliminate the complexity of protecting and managing email with an all-in-one solution that can be managed from a single pane of glass.
Boost productivity by ensuring continuous access to email, even during outages, disasters and cyber attacks.
Stop cyber threats from impacting business operations.

Cyber Threats FAQs

What are cyber threats?

Cyber threats are harmful activities, which aim to destroy, steal, or disrupt data, or exploit computer systems, networks, and harm digital systems in general. As we are now more dependent on technology then ever, it is important to understand the risks of cyber threats, to both business and individuals, and take measures to protect against cyber threats.

What does vulnerability in cyber security mean?

A vulnerability in cyber security refers to a weakness or flaw in a computer system or network, that can be exploited by hackers in a malicious cyber act. Cyber security vulnerabilities can manifest in different forms – they can exist in hardware, software, or reveal themselves as a human error, and can occur at any time. Attackers will look for them and exploit any of them, sometimes even combining one or more, to effectively achiever their goals.

What are the most common types of cyber security threats?

Some of the most common types of cyber security threats used by malicious actors include malware, ransomware, phishing, Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, and impersonation attacks.

Are cyber threats on the rise?

While cyber security awareness, technological capabilities, and cyber security providers like Mimecast are continually improving, unfortunately, so are the sophistication of attacks and the skills of attackers. Cyber threats continue to grow exponentially. According to estimates, the cost of cybercrime will hit $8 trillion in 2023 and $10.5 trillion by 2025.

Emerging cyber threats to watch for in 2023

Organizations need to ensure that not only are their IT staff up-to-date on the current threats and trends, but that through awareness and training, everyone from board members to entry-level personnel are as well. Cyber threats are continually evolving so all users must be kept aware of the latest trends in cyber attacks. A partial list of trends to watch include:

Cloud vulnerabilities
Data breaches
IoT device attacks
Mobile device attacks
Phishing attacks
Ransomware attacks
Risky remote work environments
Social engineering
Vendor/Contractor/Partner vulnerabilities

Related Cyber Threats Resources