On the trail of the Achilles heel
Over 80 per cent of companies in Germany consider the risk of becoming the victim of a cyberattack to be high. According to the cyber security study by KPMG and Lünendonk, they see ransomware and phishing as the greatest threat to their systems and data. However, DDoS attacks and vulnerabilities in IT systems also worry companies.
And the fear is anything but unfounded. The German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) warns that these types of attacks are increasing and the number of vulnerabilities is also on the rise. What dangers should companies arm themselves against?
Ransomware: The biggest threat to IT security
Ransomware remains the biggest security risk for companies. According to the BSI, the trend of recent years is continuing: cyber criminals are expanding their blackmail methods. Trojans, app lockers or screen lockers encrypt data, databases or systems, or block access to computers and apps. The perpetrators use various gateways to infiltrate the blackmail software.
They then extort a ransom – and if that doesn’t work, they threaten to publish the data on leak sites. The damage can be immense, slowing down critical business processes and operations. This affects not only businesses, but also government agencies and hospitals.
Phishing: Confidential data at risk
One wrong click and email recipients end up on a malware-infected website or a spoofed website. They are tricked into entering sensitive identity or authentication information. Contaminated email attachments are still the most common method of malware distribution, even in companies.
Phishing is lucrative for criminals: they send out masses of seemingly legitimate emails, hoping that a few recipients will fall for it.
Criminals put much more effort into spear-phishing, targeting specific employees or teams. They research details in advance to appear more credible and fool even experienced users.
Websites and web servers under constant attack
Attackers use a variety of hacking methods to gain access to corporate systems. In a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, they bombard websites or servers, causing them to function poorly or not at all. They often use botnets to do this. According to the BSI, DDoS attacks are one of the main threats to corporate cybersecurity. A DoS (Denial of Service) attack has the same goal, but is less massive.
Brute force attacks target passwords: hackers try to guess them by trial and error. SQL injections allow attackers to inject malicious code into Web sites and then retrieve sensitive data, while cross-site scripting mimics real Web sites and reads confidential information.
Increasingly, however, cybercriminals are targeting their suppliers and service providers rather than companies directly. Such supply chain attacks are particularly insidious because they are carried out through supposedly trusted contacts, software, and services. In addition, today’s supply chains are often so extensive and complex that the attacks are often difficult to trace.
Focus on the cloud and its data
Cloud computing is the best way for businesses to be faster, more flexible, more agile, and more productive. Hybrid work environments are also possible. No wonder 84 percent of German companies use cloud services, according to the Bitkom and KPMG Cloud Monitor.
But when information is stored off-site and constantly moving back and forth, new dangers arise. With cloud jacking, criminals target this data. They want to read it, manipulate it, or encrypt it with ransomware. They use different access methods to do this.
Targeted and prolonged attacks by state hackers
Every cyberattack is a threat to businesses. But for some attacks, criminals have vast resources and staying power. Advanced persistent threats (APTs) use sophisticated methods, tools, and technical expertise over long periods of time to access data or disrupt operations. These attackers are usually organized and state-sponsored. According to the BSI, these attacks are also on the rise.
Hackers typically focus on large corporations, government agencies, or critical infrastructure operators. However, SMEs can also be targets.
Vulnerable systems due to vulnerabilities and zero-day exploits
Vulnerabilities in software, frameworks and systems offer criminals relatively easy ways to infiltrate ransomware or other malware. The BSI identifies more and more such vulnerabilities, some of which are critical – most recently in the Java logging framework Log4j. Attackers were able to execute almost arbitrary code on affected systems. Like many other vulnerabilities, this was a zero-day exploit: no patches or workarounds were initially available.
