Cybersecurity has been a concern for the past few decades, ever since the internet started gaining traction, however, it has become even more of concern ever since the pandemic of 2019. With close to five billion people using the internet every day it is safe to say that the majority of the world today exists online.
For cybercriminals, this means that the online environment is more populated than ever before and there are more people for them to prey on. More importantly, as people now use the internet for everything from running their digital business to carrying out their remote jobs, each attack can do a lot more damage and compromise far more sensitive information than just a social media account. Here are some solutions.
Training
One of the most common ways of stealing information is phishing. This is a process through which an attacker pretends to be someone else, usually a well-reputed authority, an employer, or even a senior within the organization. They contact the victim under this alias and manage the fish out the information they are looking for because they are able to trust and manage to make them seem like credible sources.
The only way to counter this form of cybercrime is to educate employees and show them how they can stay safe from such fraudsters. Also, using good security solutions such as anti-virus software, a VPN and a firewall can help filter out these attacks just as how emails that are considered dangerous are diverted to the spam folder in your email.
MFA
One of the biggest problems that cybercriminals capitalize on is the fact that people use the same credentials to access different accounts. When this happens, the criminal only needs to decrypt the information of one account and they get access to all the platforms that are accessed using those credentials. The best way to counter this is to use Multi-Factor Authentication. This will not only help fight off problems such as credential theft but will also make it close to impossible for someone to wrongfully gain access to your account even if they have valid credentials. Until the login is confirmed through a secondary process, access will not be granted.
Segmentation
Once an attacker has gained access to a company network or even a home network, their next step is usually to expand laterally and gain access to other parts of the network till they are able to access the entire network. One of the most effective solutions is to create segments within the broader network so that each segment is individually governed and it is like having small segments of the network put together to create the entire system. In this way, if one compartment is compromised at least all the other segments can stay clean and continue to operate. At the very least, companies should consider segregating their most critical network components from the rest of the system so that if the system is breached at least the core functions will remain intact.
There is no one best solution when it comes to digital security and ideally, people should look to use a mix of approaches to create a comprehensive security solution that will be effective against a wide range of attacks.
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