4 Emerging Cyber Security Threats To Watch
In the cyber security world, threats appear and even recede at a brisk pace. Folks monitoring internet security solutions need to think ahead and not just react to what's happening now. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, you should be seeking cyber security solutions for these four emerging threats.
Theft of Processing Power
Especially with increasing security scrutiny and the emergence of cryptocurrencies, hackers' interest in the contents of computers has moved away from finding and exploiting financial information. One target that may surprise you is leveraging compromised systems quietly to harvest their processor cycles. Crypto requires significant computing power, and folks mining it sometimes turn to nefarious sources to plug in bigger computational workloads. By infecting a computer with malware, hackers can take control of its processor cycles.
What makes this approach particularly nefarious is it tends to be quiet. You won't notice the loss of processing power unless you need all the cores on a computer or server to handle a task. Consequently, it often goes undetected for months.
People Working from Home
The emerging work-from-home economy has created a new vulnerability point. This is especially the case if you need to allow remote workers access to your company's servers. Without IT folks constantly monitoring the workers' systems for threats, you have to treat these remote connections as potential sources of trouble.
Ransomware
Although ransomware has been around for decades, it now has a powerful enabling technology. Once more, cryptocurrency has created threats. Specifically, it has provided the getaway vehicle for hostile parties extorting organizations with compromised systems. A hacker can take over a system and demand a ransom across a crypto network. The payments are untraceable without massive government resources, and the hackers usually route them to countries without strong banking protections.
The net effect is a clean getaway if the victim pays the ransom. What if the victim doesn't pay? Eventually, the bad guys have to pull the trigger and wreck the victim's systems.
Edge and Cloud Services
It's worth thinking about these systems as your autonomous remote workers. Their existence produces many of the same challenges that accompany the work-from-home ecosystem. However, cloud and edge computing add a layer of difficulty because there isn't a person present to notice when the device is compromised. Monitoring through cyber security solutions is critical because you will need a way to increase awareness of possible threats.
For more information on cyber security solutions, contact a professional near you.