How To Protect Your Business From Cyber Extortion
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Table of Contents
What Is Cyber Extortion?
A cyberattack or threat of an attack combined with a demand for money or another response in exchange for preventing or resolving the attack constitutes cyber extortion.
Attackers using cyber-extortion attempt to access a company's systems in order to find vulnerable areas or valuable targets. The most popular method of cyberextortion is ransomware, which is used by cybercriminals to demand money. Additionally, they use distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, steal sensitive business information, and make threats to reveal it.
How Can Cyber Extortion Affect My Business?
Every industry, size of business, and nation is impacted uniformly by cyber extortion. Professional services like those provided by lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, the public sector, manufacturing, healthcare, technology, and finance have been some of the industries targeted by cybercriminals the most in 2020. Cyber extortion can affect any company that relies on email, open data storage systems, or communication.
A company is more likely to pay the ransom to cybercriminals the more expensive the website's downtime is. The company in question would, however, be added to the criminals' list of ransom payers by simply paying the ransom. This implies that over time, the businesses that give in and pay the ransom will almost certainly continue to be targeted and suffer financial losses as a result.
Depending on the type of business you operate, reputational damage due to data breaches can cause you to lose clients and experience a decline in sales until you can win back their trust.
If you don’t have appropriate security measures and become a victim of these attacks, you will have to pay heavy bills. Staff overtime, lost revenue, and other indirect costs will also be included in the calculation of half of the costs. Later, the organization would spend more money on technology upgrades and employee awareness programs.
Last but not least, failure to implement appropriate security measures in the wake of any kind of cyber-threat can lead to fines and regulatory sanctions.
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Steps To Help Protect Against Cyber Extortion
Cyber extortionists are always looking for new opportunities to threaten victims and exploit vulnerabilities. As a result, businesses must be vigilant in their attempts to stop these exploits.
Organizations must implement effective cyber defenses to lower the risk of becoming a victim of cybercrime. The following are some top recommendations for lowering the risk of cyberextortion:
Know the data that your company has, and know how deep you are in.
You can’t fully anticipate the danger until you know the type and volume of data you have.
Train your employees regularly and not just until something happens.
Teach staff members how to spot spear phishing. To assist in limiting the risk to the company, it is essential that all workers understand the value of safeguarding the information they frequently handle.
Perform employee background checks.
Employee background checks can reveal whether they have a criminal history.
Create a backup of everything.
Create bandwidth capabilities backups, data backups, and file backups. In the event of extortion, this will assist your business in keeping your information safe.
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