An IT Support Blog from London

Information technology risks range from the very apparent to the silent and hidden. The majority of businesses mitigate the most obvious risks: only an irresponsible IT operation will do without network firewalls in place or skip on regularly updating operating systems and software. Yet it is the less obvious risks which can trip up even carefully run IT functions – and which can cause progressive or indeed sudden harm to your business.

Based on the 2016 edition of Ponemon’s annual Cost of Cyber Crime report, phishing is now one of the most prevalent cyber-attacks today. Should you be worried about it? It depends. If you think any of the consequences of phishing attacks outlined below can impact your business, then maybe you should be.

Tarnish your company’s image

Most phishing attacks are designed to steal personal information. The way cyber criminals do this is by crafting legitimate-looking emails that compel recipients into disclosing their personal details.

DDoS attacks that force websites to go offline and cripple servers are nothing new, but many of the massive DDoS attacks last year, which also happened to be the biggest in history, had a common characteristic we’ve never seen before. They all originated from hordes of zombified IoT devices, also known as IoT botnets.

Because IoT devices are here to stay, this threat won’t be going away anytime soon. If your network includes websites and other Internet-facing applications, you need to understand what these threats are, how it can impact your business, and what we in the business community can do to protect our IT infrastructures from these types of attacks.