Enterprise Cybersecurity Threats

For some people, the word enterprise is a synonym to success, and for the rest of the people, the synonym is “loads of money”. It doesn’t matter in what industry you are, the bigger your enterprise is, the more people would want to steal from you or wish to bring this giant down to take its place. This picture is not really pleasant, but with the right enterprise software and knowing the major concepts of enterprise cybersecurity, you won’t have to worry about the protection of your business and your reputation.

Cyberattacks from Outside

The size and popularity of the enterprise usually dictate the diversity and severity of cyberattacks. Here are the most common types of illegal cyber activity towards the companies of all sizes.

DDoS Attacks

Distributed denial-of-service attacks remain among the biggest threats for enterprise security. DDoS is basically a set of actions aimed at compromising the normal work of a network, server, or service by overloading them with data packets. DDoS attacks cause two kinds of severe damage:

• the target becomes unreachable for its users (employees, clients, etc.);

• the attacker takes control over the target and can steal data, contaminate the entire network, or put the target out of service.

In February 2020, Amazon Web Services faced The largest DDoS attack ever recorded (with a 2.3 Tbps peak traffic volume). Even though the company does not disclose such details as the origin of the attack and the target, you can read their AWS Shield Threat Landscape Report for more information.

Malware Attacks

Without proper software protection, malware can ruin enterprises to the ground. Depending on the origin and its goal, specialists distinguish different types of malware, such as:

• Virus

• Worm

• Trojan

• Ransomware

• Bot and botnet

• Rootkit

• Spyware

• Adware

• Grayware

• Keylogger, and more.

Statista indicates that the most targeted by malware in 2019 was the Public industry, with its 4 347 cases of malware occurrence. As you see on the chart, nearly all existing industries are in the risk group, so prior to launching your business product or software for a company's needs, you need to integrate solutions that will protect the system from malware or at least can minimize caused damage.

Phishing (Social Engineering)

This cyberattack is a combination of software and psychological manipulation that helps cyber criminals to get confidential information from employees. Our deeply beloved service Statista indicates that phishing is a serious threat not just to people as users or customers but also is the most common type of cyberattacks experienced by the U.S. companies in 2019.

A recent Twitter security incident that resulted in hacking 130 celebrity accounts, including Barack Obama and Bill Gates, is one of the most interesting examples that indicate the necessity of multi-level authorization and tool access for employees.

Advanced Persistent Threat

The advanced persistent threat is very hard to detect, which makes this type of attack one of the most dangerous for enterprise security. APT works as follows – a cybercriminal penetrates an enterprise network and silently stays there for a long period of time. Unlike numerous types of attacks, this one aims only at stealing as much data as possible and brings no other damage to the organization’s software or infrastructure. APT is the “product” of sophisticated and experienced cybercriminals; thus, to protect your business from such data or money leaking, your network security software must be enriched with advanced protection that can automatically recognize unauthorized access, deny it, and alert the respective security management officer with a detailed report.

Employees as a Cyberthreat

The worst enemy is a bad ally, and when we’re talking about enterprise cybersecurity, these bad allies can be your employees. Back in 2016, Statista presented an attacker origin chart (based on the IBM information), which indicates that the majority of cyberthreats come from the inside of an enterprise.

Even though the chart was created five years ago, the statistics remain relevant to this day because it is easier to compromise data security when you have access to at least some of the required tools and information. 

In terms of possible cyberthreats from the inside, you can distinguish three main scenarios:

• attack from an angry or irritated employee (for example, a worker who is about to get fired, a worker who believes that they are underappreciated, a worker who wants to frame a colleague, etc.);

• attack from a mole, i.e., an employee who got a job only to provide illegal actions towards the company (steal data, compromise company reputation, place virus, etc.);

• damage caused unintentionally by the incompetent employee (data breach, etc.).

The inside job problem can be solved only with a comprehensive strategy that includes: 

• psychology and human resources constant monitoring and involvement;

• understandable and detailed non-disclosure and other kinds of agreements;

• “invisible” security;

• multifactor access to important data;

• ML or AI-driven software that detects inconsistencies;

• Backup database and implemented “redo” functionality that allows to recover data in case of mistakes like deleting important information or history.

Software and Hardware Protection

Sometimes, the cybersecurity threat comes not from the people but from the least expected side – hardware. To protect your business from hardware or software malfunction that can result in the loss of data, you need to integrate a microservice-based architecture and blockchain. These solutions will divide your data into separate pieces that will be stored in separate places. Depending on your business, you can store data on physical servers, use cloud storage, or combine them.

Thus, if one physical or cloud server gets damaged, you either lose a small amount of data or won’t lose it at all because this data is stored on other servers as backup.

The quality of your database hardware and its surrounding conditions must be flawless in order to achieve its smooth work and productivity for years. However, if you are not a hardware specialist, you better consult with experts who would advise you the most efficient hardware compounds and manufacturers.

Why Use Data Science in Enterprise Cybersecurity

Cybercriminals get smarter, and their schemes are more sophisticated than ever. Thus, without the help of Data Science technologies and techniques, you can see your entire enterprise security system as a person standing under the rain without an umbrella or a shelter of any kind. Data Science has many things to offer companies in terms of protection. 

Data mining and processing

To create an advanced cybersecurity system that would recognize intrusions, inconsistencies, and different kinds of malfunctions, you need to “educate” your system with enough data. Enterprises, especially in Fintech and Healthcare, face the “lack of data” challenge; thus, you need to make the system automatically collect and process data from the required legal sources. With the help of data mining and processing technologies, you will be able to analyze your weak spots in cybersecurity and eliminate them.

Artificial Intelligence

Systems empowered by Artificial Intelligence are always beneficial for business and safety because they give access to the capabilities of predictive data analytics. By making your system AI-driven, you will enhance the quality of your cybersecurity because it will be able to automatically distinguish even the most sophisticated and smart intrusions. Also, it will be able to protect your business from data theft and protect your software from malware.

Machine Learning

Being the part of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, in combination with Big Data processing, will be able to increase the security of your data and money. In fact, Machine Learning is widely used in all kinds of risk management fraud detection systems. To make the system high-quality, software engineers educate the system either on collected input data or integrate data generating algorithms that allow the system to automatically create data like types of users, fraudulent scenarios, etc. 

You should keep in mind that in terms of cybersecurity, the Machine Learning process will be never-ending because fraudulent schemes constantly change and become more sophisticated. Thus, your system must be ready for the constant hard work to protect your business day and night.

Blockchain

Blockchain is broader than cryptocurrency and finance, and in case you have a multi-step data transaction with visibility and traceability, you need to implement this technology in your enterprise platform. Once you put a piece of information in your blockchain for storage, it becomes highly difficult to change this data for cybercriminals, no matter how good they are.

All your data stored in a blockchain is encrypted and has a common history available for all blocks in the network. This approach to handling data eliminates chances of transaction duplication and other types of fraudulent activity towards your data and security integrity.

Big Data

When it comes to the enterprise business scale, Big Data makes everything better and more powerful, especially cybersecurity. If you have access to Big Data capabilities, you can protect your business from nearly all negativities such as data breach, hiring a mole, market collapse, global-scale catastrophes, etc. 

Of course, Big Data only cannot do much, but when it is applied in combination with other Data Science technologies like data processing, Machine Learning, and so on, you won’t need to worry about cybercriminals hacking your data or business rivals contaminating your software with viruses and putting you out of business.

Final Words

The bigger your company, the better your cybersecurity system must be. Even if your business doesn’t have popularity like Amazon or Pepsi, be sure that there are people who want to steal from you or ruin your business. So, the very first thing you need to do is to find experts in cyber security solutions development.

The reason why you need skilled experts is that only they are capable of building a solid cyber shield that will protect you from outer attacks and the inside job. Moreover, you need not just a software development team but people with deep expertise in Data Science because only complex technologies and innovations like Big Data processing, ML, data encryption, and others can ensure the best protection.

In case you’re looking for a software development team that has expertise in both Data Science and enterprise cybersecurity, you’ve already found the best one! Just contact us, describe your requirements and needs, and we will offer you the most optimized solution, the stack of technologies, and the budget.