A couple of years ago, a friend of mine, a young versatile entrepreneur, had launched a revolutionary financial product to bridge the credit gap for the unbanked. His product gained incredible traction in the first year with over 100,000 users downloading the app and a million naira in processing.

Unfortunately, a chink was found in the company’s armoury unexpectedly halting my friend’s upward trajectory. The company’s database was hacked, wiping out its entire financial records and customer base.

What is a Cyber Attack?
A cyberattack is an attempt to steal, alter, or destroy a specified target by hacking into a susceptible system. According to Wikipedia, cyberattacks can range from installing spyware on a personal computer to attempting to destroy the infrastructure of entire nations.

The Consequences of CyberAttack
Fast forward millions of years later into a much more digitized world, a million and one online tools have popped up for big and small companies to optimize regular work processes with.

The cost incurred from a cyberattack or a data breach is mind-blowing. According to a report from Atlas VPN, over $1trillion (N504 trillion) was spent on cybersecurity or given up as a result of a cyberattack in 2020 (this cost was exacerbated by the COVID 19 pandemic).

And this is not abating any time soon. Cybersecurity Ventures, a cybersecurity research firm, expects global cybercrime costs to grow by 15 per cent per year over the next five years, reaching $10.5 trillion annually by 2025 (more than 10x the expected GDP of Nigeria in 2025).

Hackerpocalypse
These staggering stats only point to one thing; companies all over the world are losing the cyberwar to hackers, most especially small and medium-sized corporations where it is estimated that 60 per cent go out of business within six months of falling victim to a data breach or cyber attack.

Already, 1 in 6 companies pays a ransom to hackers according to the annual Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report.

It’s Coming Home
Back home in Nigeria, the statistics are grim as well. According to a British software and hardware company report, Nigerian companies recorded the second-highest percentage (86% were targeted by hackers) of cyberattacks worldwide behind India last year. In 2019, a report by Serianu, an IT Services and Consulting firm, Nigeria lost $649 million (N327.1 billion) to cybercrime.

This shows that Nigeria, and in extension, Africa isn’t insulated from this ongoing cyberwar. Africa is increasingly the target of cyber espionage, making it imperative for businesses across the continent to find effective ways to protect their assets from would-be hackers.

Here are 10 easy ways businesses can avoid being hacked:

1. Multi Factor Authentication
The easiest and most popular way to breach a company’s backend is through password theft. According to a 2020 Verizon data report, 81% of the total number of breaches leveraged stolen or weak passwords. Also, in a breach report done in 2019, over 1 million passwords are stolen every day. What’s worse is most hackers do the bare minimum to hack these passwords. When it comes to password security, all a hacker needs is an employee’s insistence on being the weak link (you know what they say about the weakest link?).

Thank goodness there are ways a company can guard against such monstrous vulnerabilities and one of them is the use of Multifactor Authentication like Google and Microsoft Authenticator to help stave off would-be snoopers. In addition, employers can put in place second-level security protection like tokens and biometrics for their employees.

2. Don’t Click That Link

Employees are daily bombarded with emails, but quite a lot of them are intended to steal sensitive information. This is called phishing, which tricks victims into revealing vital and personal information to the attacker. Phishing attacks are increasingly becoming the norm. A 2019 Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report estimated that 94% of malware are delivered via email while in a 2019 report done by Symantec Internet Security Threat Report, 48% of email attacks are office files.

[img]https://www.descasio.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/do-not-click-2.jpg[/img]

This makes it imperative for businesses to adopt anti-phishing strategies to guard against regular phishing attacks. Some of these strategies could include using more sophisticated anti-phishing filters, user training for employees to recognize phishing attempts and deal with them immediately, setting up firewalls and security measures.

Most importantly, employees and business owners should learn NOT to click on a link or download any file until sure!

3. Invest in Security Software

Investing in cybersecurity software and firms is a no-brainer for businesses and organizations looking for a holistic approach to protect their data, especially in a year where global spending on cybersecurity is expected to exceed $1 trillion. This is more pertinent for small businesses as they are more prone to data breaches.

A trusted anti-spyware will limit a company’s exposure to snoopers by quickly detecting malicious applications.

4. Training Training Training!
You can spend all the gazillion dollars you have on anti-spyware software but if your employees aren’t versatile enough to quickly detect or identify malicious links or are careless with their company’s credentials, your business will always be susceptible to cyberattacks.

According to an IBM study, over 95% of cybersecurity breaches are due to non-IT-related human error. This means for every 10 breaches that occur in a company, only 0.5 are due to non-human error.

This makes training of employees in basic cybersecurity very imperative. Employees must understand what a malicious attack looks like and must be careful enough not to disclose confidential details to third parties.

5. Encryption is the Key
Except you are trying to cyber spy on North Korea or into the espionage business in general, you don’t need high-level complex encryption to protect your business from cyber-attacks. However, you still need standard level encryption for your data and entire work process to keep the low life, online snoopers, away.

If you don’t already know, encryption is the process of converting information or data into a code, especially to prevent unauthorized access. Encryption plays its most important role when two parties intend to exchange confidential information across digital platforms.

Think of it as Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak or switching on stealth mode in the middle of a splinter cell mission. Your messages will travel right through the noses of ill-intentioned parties and stay undetected.

6. Watch Your Employees!
Your employees are the heartbeat of the company. On the flip side, they can also act as the death knell to a company by contributing, either deliberately or inadvertently, to its downfall through cyberattacks.

To guard against this, avoid/limit the sharing of very sensitive data to your staff. If you must share this data, ensure you plug all potential leakages. If possible, create a sort of ‘Watch System’ for your staff, but this must not impugn their rights to privacy.

Most importantly, put a premium on employing the right and trusted person who will do nothing to sabotage your business which includes subjecting it to cyber hacks.

Conclusion
In conclusion, you need to ask yourself a brutal question; can your business withstand a cyberattack without collapsing under the wave? If your answer is a no or a wimpy yes, then you need to adopt some of (if not all) the cybersecurity solutions in this article.

https://www.descasio.io/6-ways-to-keep-hackers-away-from-your-business/

Beautiful! it is just that even the Banks and large corporates that continue to be hit by cybercriminals are the ones shifting with one leg

Personally I don't click any link I'm not comfortable with no matter how enticing it is

7) Beware of....

[img]https://c./zBRifmweUGMAAAAC/hushpuppi-coded_plumber.gif[/img]

This is the only way someone could fraud me though, if na those other sweet talk, I will never fall for it, na greedy people deh fall for that kind scam

Damnnn niggar
Grab my weed to Peruse through this article

Awesome! OP, thanks for sharing. Here is free book on business ideas & money sources directory for you, it's 100% free!
https://www.nairaland.com/6666800/looking-business-ideas-money-fund.

You have to architecht your infrastructure with security in mind; hence, secure by design!

If you know how much headache captcha solves ehn...

FreeStuffsNG:
Awesome! OP, thanks for sharing Here is free book on business ideas & money sources directory for you, it's 100% free!
https://www.nairaland.com/6666800/looking-business-ideas-money-fund.

OP said we should not click link

Hmmm

Social engineering is the easiest way people are hacked. the playing field of a hack life cycle is dynamic. Today social engineering is usually the first phase especially in cases of spear phishing. This is done simultaneously with passive reconnaissance and then overt/covert scanning.
you can piece together most people's life by just looking at their social media, you can insert yourself in the picture and exploit their weaknesses, these weaknesses can be ego, the need for attention or relationships. from there telltale personal information starts creeping out. birthday, favorite color, mother's maiden name, name of the first school attended. things that are call PII in the industry. with this information, a hacker can start creating a profile of the target, this information is the same that is used for security questions when a website wants to verify your identity.
Another approach is the spoof email or URL in a text message that requires you to click on it for more information. this one is my favorite. once the link is clicked, it will take you to a BS web page but in the background, remote access trojans (RAT) have taken over your device. the attacker can hacker can log your keystrokes, go through your phone, turn on your camera to see you or your mic to hear you.
Another approach is to look at companies' adverts for IT employment. which is a good source of reconnaissance. look at what they are advertising for, SQL, Windows Server, Cisco ASA, there is a vulnerability report in Github outlining how you can exploit those vulnerabilities if the company does not patch their devices on time.
Last one. this one is on a higher level is the cell phone hack. most times this is state-sponsored hackers at work. the best place to set this up is at the airport. the is called the ss7 hack. once passengers land the first thing they do is turn on their phones. The hackers have mini BTS that run on microwave frequency, this means because they are closer to the target, the target's phone will connect to their BTS and then they route the target's phone to the legitimate BTS (cell Tower) that way they create a man-in-the-middle attack, listening to your calls and sending applications to embed in your phone.

Lastly please stop clicking on "unsubscribe " from emails pestering you. just delete and block. that "unsubscribe" button might as well say Thank you for letting me in.

Ok back to work.

Ok

Nice info









Guys wey no get girlfriend get peace of mind

Noted
We muevvvveee

richmond500:
OP said we should not click link

You are absolutely right sir, it's just that in this case, it is a nairaland link, just like the link to the OP's post

FreeStuffsNG:
You are right but that's a nairaland link, just like the link to the OP's post

I am still not clicking

Ok

richmond500:
I am still not clicking

I completely agree with the OP. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. We should rather err on the side of caution.
Regards.

Alright

Good

Okay

Falling into their devise can make a sane man go haywire. I know what I am saying.
I pray no one falls into their evil devises. Amen!

Imagine a link that is telling u to login to ur FaceBook while u are online FaceBook


More like ha ha ha ha ha


Mainwhile

Commotfornigeri:
If you know how much headache captcha solves ehn...

DO you know what captcha does?

bad programming logic give room to vulnerability and attack.

u as a programmer should not depend on free themes,free this and free that.
you should be able to write all your code by your self and block all the vulnerable point.
we have several type of attacks(In your case SQL INJECTION ATTACK was use against your friend and it worked perfectly).
some attacks can be use to wipe your entire database.
it's pretty easy for an attacker to execute an SQL INJECTION on your code, if they are not properly protected or validated before communicating to the database.

I'm an SQL INJECTION specialist and i can help out on you project from SQL INJECTION ATTACK.

also for your backed programming , please learn how to use OOP, Object Oriented Programming.
this OOP style of programming, can reduce the impact of attack.

I can help you in PHP OOP and JAVA OOP

SQL INJECTION is known to be an attack that can deal with you database.

i can also help you monitor the IP address of the attacker
i can also help you retrieve the details of the attacker machine,
i can help you track the attacker,
i can help you block the attacker for future attacks

Nice one

iconnecta:
bad programming logic give room to vulnerability and attack.

u as a programmer should not depend on free themes,free this and free that.
you should be able to write all your code by your self and block all the vulnerable point.
we have several type of attacks(In your case SQL INJECTION ATTACK was use against your friend and it worked perfectly).
some attacks can be use to wipe your entire database.
it's pretty easy for an attacker to execute an SQL INJECTION on your code, if they are not properly protected or validated before communicating to the database.

I'm an SQL INJECTION specialist and i can help out on you project from SQL INJECTION ATTACK.

also for your backed programming , please learn how to use OOP, Object Oriented Programming.
this OOP style of programming, can reduce the impact of attack.

I can help you in PHP OOP and JAVA OOP

SQL INJECTION is known to be an attack that can deal with you database.

i can also help you monitor the IP address of the attacker
i can also help you retrieve the details of the attacker machine,
i can help you track the attacker,
i can help you block the attacker for future attacks

I will love to play with you....

My blog has been attacked several times. I honestly don't know why? I never make one kobo from the site lol.

I don beef up security sha. Apart from my web maintenance guy, na only two of us get passwords.

But everyday, Jetpack has to stop tens of thousands of attacks. No be small thing sha.