What Are the Various Types of Cyber Attacks Faced at an Organization Level?

The year 2020 witnessed majority of the working population working from remote locations. This has paved way for a hybrid work structure where not everyone at one time is required to be working from office. However, these

modern ways of work have seen an uptick in the number of cyber-attacks. These cyber attacks can be with an intention to leak confidential information to the public or with the intention to compromise the security of the information withheld by the organisation. Statista reports that there was a significant jump in the cyber crimes that were reported in the year 2020 from any previous years with states of Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh topping the list. During the year 2017, the financial impact of such cyber crime was approximately 18 billion US dollars.

While cyber-attacks are perennial problem in a digital led environment, a cyber insurance policy can come handy in preventing your organisation from the financial consequences of it.

Here are some of the different types of cyber-attacks faced at an organisation level:

• Malware attacks

A common type of cyber threat that an organisation faces the risk is malware attack. Malware is a malicious software that is designed to infiltrate, snoop on, or create a backend access and control the organisation’s system and data. These malware attacks include ransomware, worms, trojan, adware and even spyware. Cybersecurity experts state that there has been over 800% increase in malware attacks since 2020. Malwares are generally downloaded by the user of a computer system unknowingly by clicking on a malicious link. A cyber insurance coverage for malware attacks can help avoid the financial loss that such attacks have on organisations and its data. *

• Phishing attacks

Phishing attacks are strategically designed cyber attacks where the user is being tricked into downloading a malware. This can happen via e-mail or text messages that look like a real request, but in fact, is nothing but a scam. Phishing attacks are globally the most common cause of a data breach and are the root cause of a cybercrime during the last decade as reported by Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Investigation report.

• Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS)

DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service attacks are those where a large traffic of data is overloaded onto a service, website, application, service or the network. This flooding of increased traffic is using bots that prevent the genuine users from accessing it. Since these attacks are performed using computer systems, cyber-criminals are making an increased use of such type of attack. *

• Man-in-the-Middle attack (MitM)

Man-in-the-Middle attacks are designed to intercept communication between the organisation and its users. These attacks are aimed at stealing personal or company-related information or even redirect the information to another destination. These attacks are not common as its objectives can be met using a malware attack. However, they are easy to deploy considering unsuspecting users connect to fake WiFi networks and the information can be easily tracked. *

• Credential stuffing attack

A credential stuffing attack aims to use the same passwords found in an earlier data breach because majority of users recycle the same password at different places. *

* Standard T&C Apply

These are some of the different forms of cyber attacks where data and information systems of an organisation are compromised. The financial impact of such attacks can be severe and an insurance claim using cyber policy can come handy.Insurance is the subject matter of solicitation. For more details on benefits, exclusions, limitations, terms and conditions, please read sales brochure/policy wording carefully before concluding a sale.