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In the modern tech era, cybercrimes are a significant threat. Especially for SMEs, cybersecurity is an all-time prevailing issue that needs protection for its sensitive data. Cyber-attacks get typically launched against small-to-medium size businesses; more than 40 percent of cyberattacks target these businesses. It is because criminals are aware that giant corporations have high-tech security and backup systems. While small businesses lack such measures, thus being more vulnerable. If you are a CEO of an SMB and cybersecurity is not yet on your priority list, it is better that you instantly change your mind-set on this. Not to worry about the exceeding budget, as luckily now, there are many ways to protect your company even with limited resources.
While defending your organization against a potential cyberattack, you being the CEO, must be aware of practical methods of shielding the systems. Here are a few attacks that hackers usually carry-out;
Denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks
It is a type of attack that causes the system’s resources to run out of capacity, thus paralyzing it to the level that it cannot respond to further requests.
TCP SYN flood attack
In this cyberattack, the attacker floods the system small-in process queue during a Transmission Control Protocol session with nonstop connection requests, freezing it to respond to the original system requests.
Teardrop attack
In a teardrop attack, the attacker causes IP packets to overlap. When the system attempts to reconstruct the fragmented packets, it crashes and fails.
Smurf attack
Here the attacker saturates the target network with traffic using IP spoofing and ICMP. The attacker cleverly exploits the ICMP echo requests to target the broadcast internet protocol.
Ping of death attack
In this type of attack, a mega-sized IP targets the system. Since the system cannot tackle the IP packet beyond the maximum range of 65,535 bytes, it experiences a buffer overflow while reassembling the fragmented IP packet and crashes.
Botnets
Botnets are one of the most destructive attacks by an intruder. It carries millions of malware, all controlled by the hacker, to execute a 3significant DDoS attack. In this attack, the bots are zombies or zombie systems that overwhelm the system’s capacity to handle bandwidth processing, continuously exceeding its limit.
WAYS TO TACKLE A CYBERCRIME EMERGENCY
1. Create an Effective Security System Plan (SSP)
An effective security system plan is a must for SMBs to secure their data in case of an emergency. The SSP compilation of all security features present on the hardware, software, and other training and cyber emergency response methods. This document comprises the strategic measures applicable if an unauthorized user tries to access the critical section. It also involves all organization stakeholders and adds extra security to the operations when the employees’ schedule gets busy. If you train your IT panel on this subject, you can save many bucks by keeping things in-house. Otherwise, you’d need to hire a bunch of professionals. Ensure that your organization’s SSP is very well curated; otherwise, it is just a waste of time and money. A well-managed SSP sets a prime example for people looking for ways of how to become a CSO who is competent in his realm.
2. Train Your Employees
Untrained employees who are not learned about cybercrimes and prerequisites to defend against it are huge concerns for any organization. In today’s tech-based society, it is critical to have the basic knowledge of cybercrimes and the ability to recognize its warning signs. Suppose a person gets training about dealing with a new cyber-attack in the first phase. In that case, it reduces vulnerability chances to a great degree.
One of the many cybersecurity attacks is phishing. Employees can learn to tackle this pervasive threat by sending them fake phishing emails frequently for a certain period. After you’ve executed frequent phishing education drills with your employees, you will notice an increased sense of alertness in them while tackling any phishing email.
To implement such a campaign, you can ask your technical lead to develop a fake phishing email and send it at random timings to every employee. If an employee clicks the email, a pop-up warning shall appear informing them about the threat. This practice will train your employees for any phishing threat in the future, thus saving the company from a potential security breach.
3. Secure Your Hardware
Although cybercrimes have increased many times in the prevalent environment, most people are still reluctant about securing their hardware with reliable security software. Such decisions are elementary when you hold a prime position in the firm. If you wonder how to become a CEO who brings the best possible ways to solve problems, you can have many answers. People often look upon leaders as their ideal bosses to follow in their footsteps. Read books about being a smart decision-maker or observe their hierarchical strategies to deal with challenges.
Whatever way you proceed, the ideas must work. Try using the mainstream approach; it is essential to direct all your employees to protect the device with strong passwords. Ensure strict instructions of not sharing it with a non-concerned person. You must also ensure that the computers’ necessary hardware in your organization is locked and attached correctly to the working desks. Mainly, USB and hard disks are the most vulnerable to criminal theft.
Another way to add extra protection to your devices is to install tracking software programs for all the company devices. This way, you can effectively keep track of any suspicious activity that might occur.
4. Encrypt and Back-Up Data
One of the most effective strategies to protect against data theft is implementing two-layer security on all your company’s devices. It is achievable by encrypting the critical data and further installing a backup for it. It functions with a security code or thumb impression. If an intruder tries to bypass the first security check, the device’s data would automatically be encrypted and float its way to the backup storage.
As per the journals, data encryption is the top solution for cyberattacks. And in case the data falls into the hands of the intruder, it will be in a form almost impossible to decode. Therefore, being the organization’s CEO, it is your foremost responsibility to ensure all the sensitive data is encrypted professionally. Including the customer information, credit cards’ data, email passwords, and all other vital documents folders. You can also easily find full disk encryption software that operates virtually on all the connected devices and encrypt the data in case of a security breach. If your organization deals with lots of data daily, consider incorporating a private backup cloud for the business operations.
conclusion
It is a fact that today cyber crimes are happening every quarter of a second, and one in five people is affected by it. Cybercrimes can be phishing, malware, or even viruses carried through external devices such as the USB. However, every company or enterprise needs to prepare itself for the prevailing threat and better not get caught in absolute surprise.