A CEO's Guide To Complex Cyber Terms
A key part of cybersecurity is understanding your organization’s attack surface—that is, all the ways your organization might be attacked or breached.?
This is complicated by two factors:
Cybersecurity is also rapidly evolving, particularly with the growth of artificial intelligence, so even seasoned cyber leaders need to continually learn.?
Here are some of the key cyber terminologies you need to know, according to Protexxa’s internal experts (who used to work for the CIA, Scotland Yard, and the RCMP):
Everyday terms to know
Phishing Attack: When a hacker tries to deceive someone into revealing sensitive information or giving privileged access, such as through fake emails, online impersonation, or malicious links.
Vishing (Voice Phishing) Attack: This is the phone call equivalent of a phishing attack, where a hacker might impersonate someone on the phone and/or use urgency and fear tactics to trick someone into revealing sensitive information or giving privileged access (this is reportedly what happened in the MGM Casino breach).?
Wifi Spoofing: When hackers create fake WiFi networks with common names — for instance, “Café Guest” – to trick you into logging in. And once you do, the hacker can gain access to your sensitive files.
Business Email Compromise (BEC): Scams targeting businesses to perform unauthorized transfers of funds, such as with spoofed invoices (made to look like real vendors) or impersonation of key individuals with budget authority.?
Formjacking: This is when hackers breach a system and input malicious lines of code in checkout or login pages—that code steals someone’s information, which can later be used or sold by the hackers.
Advanced cyber concepts
Man-in-the-Middle (MitM attack): An MitM cyber attack happens when a cyber criminal eavesdrops, whether physically or digitally, to glean information about a person or organization.?
For instance, a hacker may follow a dozen employees across LinkedIn, piece together multiple stories and data points, then use that to launch a vishing (voice phishing) scam and sound real because they know so much.
Advanced Persistent Threats (APT): APTs are a multi-stage attack led by sophisticated actors against a specific target; typically, they are focused on prolonged access to critical systems rather than immediate damage for a quick ransom.?
These attacks start with a malicious actor or group penetrating an organization’s network undetected. From there, hackers use a variety of specialized techniques to steal sensitive information, such as establishing backdoors to move data around firewalls. After that, they cover their tracks—and may only make their demands or intentions known far into the future.
Zero-Day Exploits: This is when a hacker takes advantage of a vulnerability in an organization’s software or hardware. For instance, they might spot an unknown security flaw or take advantage of a known issue before a patch can be issued.?
The “zero-day” name comes from the concept that developers have “zero days” to fix the issue—because a breach occurs before they were even aware (or before they could ship the fix).?
Watering Hole Attacks: This is when hackers target a group of people by compromising a website that group regularly visits. For example, targeting lawyers by compromising a top legal journal or blog.?
Hackers may not change the user experience of site they breach—instead, they could use formjacking to steal data or observe user behavior enough to launch a phishing, vishing, or MitM attack. It can also be part of the reconnaissance step of an APT attack.?
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): This is when a hacker inserts malicious code into a web application that changes how the end user views a certain page.?
XSS can be permanently stored in a server to execute every time a user accesses the page—for instance, with formjacking code—or it can generate fake error results and redirect users to a malicious page. Either way, it puts users at risk because they may not know what’s happening.?
Knowledge leads to action
There will never be an end to learning in cyber, particularly with the threat and opportunity posed by artificial intelligence.?
The key is to understand as many of the basics as possible—then translate that into action.
As you better understand your attack surface, you can better protect it with offensive, defensive, and proactive strategies.
This post originally appeared on the Connected & Newsletter by Protexxa. Subscribe now to get more insights directly in your inbox every two weeks.
Headlines and resources worth reading:
Cyber events to know about:
Plain language cyber tips
? Start with 5 minutes a day — even a simple Google News alert for “cybersecurity” can help you stay up-to-date on key cyber trends
? Always ask — not sure what a term means? Ask (or google it). Experts don’t know everything—they know it’s ok to continually learn
? Don’t oversimplify — focus on the steps a hacker takes to launch an attack, then plan what you can do to proactively defend yourself
ICYMI: Cyber headlines that still matter
Cyber attack cost the city of Hamilton, Canada over $7 million: Over $4.8 million was spent on ‘external experts’ to help get the city’s accounting, data, and other systems back online.?
Throwback: The chaos immediately after the CrowdStrike attack: A bug crashed computers all over the world, resulting in the “blue screen of death.”
Why cybersecurity is a supply chain problem: When organizations are breached, they potentially affect up and downstream businesses.?
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