Cybercrime is a threat to everyone and every business. No business or person is immune or safe, so we all have to look at the threats. To protect yourself, you need to know the top three cybercrime threats and then take steps to lower the risks. Learn these three online crimes.
Attacks can stop operations from running, cause severe and expensive damage, take time, and are stressful. Organizations and people can take steps to lower their risks, and many of these steps aren’t much harder than putting on a seatbelt in a car or a helmet before riding a bike or doing routine maintenance on our homes and cars to keep them safe.
3 Cybercrime Risks
The following are the top three dangers posed by cybercrime.
1. Data Breaches
A data breach is unauthorized access to confidential data. A person who breaks into an email account, a network, or a place where data is stored.
This breach could have many bad effects, like needing to tell the government and those affected, hurting their reputation, and more. There are many ways for cybercriminals to get into a system and steal information.
2. Ransomware
Ransomware locks computers so that they can’t be used. The cybercriminal uses malware and encryption to lock up data, and then they demand that the victim pay a large sum of money as a ransom to reaccess the systems and data.
The damage to a company’s reputation can be massive, and businesses must determine if a data breach happened.
3. Email Money Transfer Scams
Cybercriminals use email cleverly to steal big and small amounts of money. This can be terrible for money. It is possible to steal and reroute large payments. The money may never be found again, isn’t insured, and causes lawsuits and other trouble. This type of fraud is sometimes called CEO or CxO fraud (when a fake executive is used to transfer money) or business email compromise (BEC) when a fake business transfers money fraudulently.
Criminals try and succeed at these scams in many different ways. Organizations need to figure out if their email systems were hacked and if there was a data breach.
Cybercrime Protection
Good cybersecurity is the best way to protect against these three essential cybercrimes. This starts with knowledge and moves to practical steps and good decisions to plan, protect, and stop cybercrime. My Four Pillars of Cybersecurity can be an excellent place to start. People and organizations can look at their risks and plan continuous improvement.
Law enforcement may require organizations and people to protect against these crimes and investigate and report them correctly. Some laws require essential cybersecurity to protect personal information and require organizations to properly investigate and report a data breach to the government and those affected.
Conclusion
This crime could hurt everyone and every business. Knowing about it can stop it.
This is a summary with many simplifications to explain a complicated topic in a way everyone can understand. It is neither legal advice nor business advice, and it isn’t made for your situation.
