With increasing use of internet, there has been an alarming increase in number of cybersecurity threats. In addition to number, the risk and severity of cybersecurity threats has also increased. Advancement of technology and wide use of digital media have added to the skills of cyber criminals. The best practice to combat these cybersecurity threats is to be aware of different threat types and be prepared with effective cybersecurity strategies.

Here is a detailed list of cybersecurity threats that businesses should be aware of:

• Cloud Vulnerability: Cloud vulnerability is and will continue to be one of the biggest cybersecurity challenges faced by business organizations. The major reason behind this is the changing business scenario as organizations have increasing number of remote employees. The employees need to access business data from different locations in order to be efficient and productive. Thus, organizations are leveraging cloud applications and storing sensitive business data on cloud storage. Some of these cloud vulnerability attacks include data breach, mis-configuration, insecure interfaces and APIs, account hijacking, malicious insider threats, and DDoS attacks.
• AI-Enhanced Cyberthreats: AI and machine learning have found extensive applications in all fields including marketing, manufacturing, security, supply chain management, business mainstream, etc. Cyber criminals are also exploiting AI to launch sophisticated cybersecurity attacks such as AI Fuzzing and Machine Learning Poisoning.
• AI Fuzzing: Fuzzing refers to usually automated process of finding hackable software bugs by randomly feeding different permutations of data into a target program until one of those permutations reveals vulnerability. AI fuzzing integrates AI with traditional fuzzing techniques to create a tool that detects system vulnerabilities, start, automate and accelerate zero-day attacks.
• Machine Learning Poisoning: The cyber criminals target a machine learning model and inject malicious software in it. This makes the system (operating the model) vulnerable to cyber security attacks. As machine learning models feed on data sourced from surveys or social media, cyber criminals exploit user-generated information such assatisfaction ratings, purchasing histories, or web traffic by using malicious samples, introducing backdoors or Trojans for poisoning training sets and compromising the model.
• Smart Contract Hacking: Smart contracts are specially designed programs that contain self-executing codes for creating rules and processes that build blockchain-based applications. Since this is a new concept, researchers are still finding bugs in these programs. Cyber criminals exploit these vulnerabilities and target the programs for hacking into applications. this poses as a new cybersecurity threat for businesses.
• Deepfake: It is a fake video or audio created by modes such as swapping a famous person’s face in videos or altering the audio track of a video to spread fake news. The technology is AI-based and is being used extensively by cyber criminals to cause disruption across various industry segments such as financial market, media, entertainment and politics. In business world, these fake videos may be used to impersonate CEOs to spread fake news about a business.

For more information on cybersecurity threats, call Centex Technologies at (972) 375 - 9654.