Research shows that cyber attacks will cost businesses globally around $8 trillion by the end of 2022. This is highly attributed to the higher levels of internet connectivity and poor security measures. That calls for every business to deploy new and innovative cybersecurity solutions.
The fact that most small startups worldwide have inadequate funds to put in place effective measures deters the efforts they make from yielding impressive results. Here are the biggest cybercrime threats for businesses in 2022.
Business email compromise attack
With most businesses worldwide shifting their operations to online, organizations need to be aware of the BEC threats. It’s also known as conversation hijacking, and the threats are highly personalized and well-researched, making it difficult for the target audience to detect and prevent them.
The attack is usually carried out when the hackers have gained access to the computer system through a phishing attempt. At first, the attacker will go through the breached emails to gain as much knowledge as possible.
If there are payment details, the attacker will harness sufficient information about the financial capability of the business and know exactly how to carry out the attack. Sometimes they send well-crafted messages to the business’s customers to trick them into transferring money or carrying an update of their payment information.
Once a large amount of money has been lost, it’s always hard to retrieve the amount and keep the business’s operations running normally. That’s why it’s crucial to prevent hackers from gaining access to the computer network and being keen to catch the attacker before major damage.
Emotet
Emotet, first detected in 2014, is an advanced modular banking Trojan that mainly functions as a dropper or downloader of the other banking Trojans. Emotet targets small organizations, individuals, and authorities. The developers of this malware are believed to be subleasing their software and infrastructure to third parties.
It’s one of the costly and destructive cybercrime threats for businesses in 2022. The goal of this malware is to access the target devices and spy on the organization’s sensitive data. Despite the efforts made by most businesses to stop this malware by using antivirus, Emotet deceives most basic antivirus programs and hides from them.
When the malware gets access to the business’s computer systems, it spreads like a computer worm and tries to infiltrate all the other computers in the network. This is through spam emails whereby the respective email contains an infected document or malicious link.
If you download the link or open the document, the malware is also downloaded and stored onto the computer. It’s not that easy to notice these emails as they look authentic, and that’s why most people have fallen victim to Emotet attacks.
Ransomware
Studies show that there will be an increase in the rate of ransomware attacks in 2022. In 2021, it was the highest defining force of cybercrime threats, with a surge of 144%. This malicious software threatens to publish or blocks access to the computer system by encrypting it until the user pays a ransom fee.
In most cases, the charges are made with deadline failure to which the data is hidden forever. North America is one of the places where ransomware activities are very high, affecting major businesses in the country.
Most government agencies advocate against paying the ransom fee to discourage the ransom cycle. You are likely to fall victim to repeated ransom attacks if your system is not cleaned effectively. Major ransomware threats include WannaCry, CryptoLocker, NotPetya, and Ryuk.
With most business transactions being carried out online, it’s vital to ensure that the organization’s computer systems are secure from ransomware threats. Apart from the encryption, screen lockers lock the screen totally unless you pay the required fee. There are two major ways to keep off ransomware threats; prevent the attacker from gaining access to the network and catching the attacker before it’s too late.
Denial of service
Denial of service is among the biggest cybercrime threats in 2022. Most of the threats from this attack are highly sophisticated and complex to understand without a thorough understanding of cybersecurity.
The cyberattack floods the target computer system making it impossible to reply to any available requests. It’s the same with the distributed DoS, but in this case, the threat originates from a computer network. And that’s why it’s difficult to trace the real source of the attack.
Once access to the computer system is gained, the “handshake” process is disrupted, and the denial-of-service process is launched. The threats may be advanced, especially when the attackers use the time that the network is disabled to carry out their activities. Signs of the DoS attack include the; inability to access a website, more spam email than usual, and slower network performance.
Several strategies have been developed to defend against the DoS attacks in the AI-based business world. ISPs with products that detect DoS have been designed to prevent unauthorized entry into the computer network of the business organization.
Phishing
Phishing threats attempt to solicit personal information from the organization fraudulently or deliver malicious software by posing as trustworthy. The common way phishing attacks are carried out is through email, but nowadays, they also manifest as advertisements on genuine websites with security vulnerabilities.
There are mainly three types of phishing emails: billing phishing, whale, and spear-phishing. With the billing phishing, the attackers mimic a real business to trick the target victims into a malware-infected site. Spear-phishing is tailored to attack a specific company or an individual.
The main goal of whale phishing is to gain access to the credentials of the top-level executives of the business to damage the organization completely. Most phishing attacks often happen due to social engineering, with a few like “watering hole” attacks having sophisticated mechanisms of extracting sensitive data or installing malicious software.
The loss to be suffered by the business in case of attacks depends on the nature of the malware. Some are designed for compromising the organization’s data, while others are created to steal or encrypt the data into an unusable format.