There are many different types of cyber attacks that prey upon people and some of the most common for regular users include phishing scams, ransomware, man in the middle and general social engineering scams (Day 2017). Phishing in particular has become one of the most popular and successful scams to trick online consumers, it has become so prevalent today that it is estimated there is a new phishing website created every 20 seconds (Crane 2020). Phishing involves trying to deceive users to visit authentic looking websites to try and get them to reveal personal and financial information, often through emails or text messages. As it is difficult to stop from a technical stand point, the best option at combating phishing is educating the user how to identify phishing attempts and to be more cautious on clicking any links (Al-Hamar et al. 2011).
Individuals should always be vigilant to protect their data. Even if users follow all the right protocols when using their own devices, they can still be at risk via data breaches from third party companies, whose services they use. During data breaches it is common for hackers to gain access to emails and passwords and sometimes even credit card details. To avoid as much potential damage as possible individuals should ensure that they use different passwords for different services and monitor their bank for any suspicious charges. Individuals should also be wary about how much personal information they give out on the internet. Cambridge Analytica gained access to private information of over 50 million Facebook accounts, which they then used to deliver targeted political ads to influence the 2016 United States election. In this incident only 270,000 users completed a personality survey, but Cambridge Analytica were able to scrape data from the family and friends of those users (Granville 2018). This highlights how unsecure your personal information really is and how individuals need to be aware of what information they willingly give out.Data breaches can have very serious and long lasting damage on a business. After the event of a severe cyber breach it was found on average, that a company’s stock value was permanently lowered by 1.8% (Sims 2017). This is because there are many costs associated with a data breach, such as possible regulatory fines issued by governmental bodies, reputational damage, the loss of sensitive intellectual property which could result in a loss of competitiveness in the industry (James 2018). As such its hard to measure the true costs of data breach as they could end up being much more costly then first thought. Therefore, it is more important then ever for a business to incorporate modern effective cyber security measures into their policies or face very serious consequences.
Technology has improved it has made it possible for the less technological savvy to become hackers. Currently there are programs and scripts available that automate attempted hacks. As a result of this it is estimated that there is currently an attempted hack every 39 seconds (University of Maryland 2007). With the rate of technological change, businesses will need to constantly improve and adapt their security practices to make sure they remain effective and secure. It has been found that 95% of breaches could have been avoided if simple measures such as updating software, blocking fake email messages and training staff to identify and recognise threats (Internet Society 2019).