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Digital Security

in 3 Easy Steps

By Maurice Hamilton

Data breaches are on the rise across all industries. So, what can you do

to be prepared? Start with education and staying up to date with the

most common methods used to gain access to a company’s systems.

On any given day, the typical retail au- targeted. According to a 2018 report by • Malware: A program that is covertly
tomotive F&I office receives upwards of tech firm Cisco Systems - the number one placed onto a computer or electronic
1,000 pieces of sensitive customer data, provider of servers worldwide - 53% of device, with the intent to compromise
including bank account numbers, credit or midmarket businesses say that they have the confidentiality, integrity or avail-
other financial records, mortgage records, suffered a cyber breach, at a cost of $1 - ability of data.
tax documents, wire transfer receipts, So- $2.5 million. The Ponemon Institute, a • Phishing: A technique that attempts to
cial Security numbers and photos of driv- Michigan-based research group, found acquire sensitive data with the perpe-
er's licenses. But one little gap in the deal- that in 2018, 67% of small to medium trator posing as a legitimate business or
ership’s IT security system can put those sized businesses had suffered an attack. person.
valuable records at risk, exposing the com- The FBI’s Internet Crime Report found • Ransomware: A type of malware that
pany to a data breach. that more than 350,000 cyberattacks had attempts to deny access to a user’s data
occurred in 2018, costing over $2.7 bil- and encrypts that data until a ransom
Understanding your risks, lion. More recently, 3,800 publicly dis- is paid.
and putting the necessary closed data breaches occurred in the first • Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)
six months of 2019, exposing up to 4.1
Attack: A high-volume of unwanted
prevention and response billion records. traffic that ends up exhausting the
processes in place will be bandwidth as well as the resources
key to protecting your So, what can you do to be prepared? Start of a company’s systems, rendering
with education and staying up to date
them unable to respond to any more
business going forward. with the most common methods used to requests.
gain access to a company’s systems. • SQL Injection Attack: By injecting a
You may be asking yourself, “How perva- malicious inquiry, the attacker can see
sive are data breaches?” EDUCATION into the database as well as modify the
data, run any administrative command
The answer is, “Very pervasive.” According to cybersecurity firm Proof- and even wipe out the entire database.
point, more than 99% of cyber attacks rely • Man in the Middle (MITM) Attack: At-
The fact is, data breaches are on the rise on human interaction, such as opening a tackers compromise a network and in-
across all industries, and as we’ve seen file, following a link, or opening a docu- sert themselves between a client and a
from breaches like Experian and Target, ment. The most common types of attacks server, such as a WiFi network and the
all companies, regardless of size, can be include: attached devices.

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