Cybersecurity threats are a constant concern for IT leaders, practitioners, and analysts and an increasing concern for Board Directors and CEOs. These threats can disrupt operations, compromise sensitive data, and damage an organization’s reputation. Understanding the 8 most common attack vectors is crucial for building a robust defense and preventing these attacks before they occur.
This article explores the eight main cyber security threats, providing insights into their potential impact and offering best practices for mitigation. While we have discussed in detail a “Top 10 cyber security threats” list, here, we’ll focus on the core eight that can significantly impact your organization.
By understanding these threats, you can take proactive steps to safeguard your systems and data. FortifyData empowers security teams with an automated platform that automates asset detection, streamlines vulnerability management, prioritizes risk with your operational context, and strengthens your overall security posture.
What are the 8 Main Cyber Security Threats?
Ask around and read the news, you’ll likely find that these are the most common types of cyber security threats; “select all that apply” is a common feeling that we hear in discussions and proof of value evaluations with IT and security leaders. But, this list of the 8 main cyber security threats is what most compromised organizations are detecting and responding to as part of the top 10 cyber security threats. Organizations need to review their own risk management processes and threat scenarios to properly prioritize these cyber security threats and properly plan preventation and defense of them.
Additional Resources
What are the 5 Cs of Cybersecurity?
Cyber Security Risk Assessment Checklist
What tools are used for Risk Assessments?
What is NIST Cyber Risk Scoring Tool?
What is a cybersecurity Risk Assessment Tool?
What is a NIST Risk Assessment?
- Malware: Malicious software (malware) encompasses a wide range of threats, including viruses, worms, Trojans, ransomware, and spyware. These programs can steal data, disrupt operations, and damage systems.
- Phishing: Phishing attacks attempt to trick users into revealing sensitive information, such as login credentials or credit card details. These attacks often use emails or SMS messages that appear to be from legitimate sources.
- Ransomware: Ransomware, a type of malware, encrypts a victim’s data, making it inaccessible. Attackers then demand a ransom payment to decrypt the data.
- Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks: DoS attacks overwhelm a system with traffic, making it unavailable to legitimate users.
- Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) Attacks: MitM attacks intercept communication between two parties, allowing the attacker to steal data or modify messages.
- Zero-Day Attacks: Zero-day attacks exploit vulnerabilities in software that the software vendor is not yet aware of. These attacks can be particularly dangerous because there is no patch available to fix the vulnerability.
- Social Engineering: Social engineering attacks exploit human psychology to trick victims into giving up sensitive information or clicking on malicious links.
- Insider Threats: Insider threats are security threats posed by individuals who have authorized access to an organization’s systems and data. These threats can be intentional or unintentional.
What are the 8 Common Cyber Threats?
The eight main cyber security threats and vulnerabilities that are exploited in systems and software or enabled by gaining the trust of people to execute their exploits. These vulnerabilities can be technical weaknesses, such as software bugs, or misconfigurations. They can also be human weaknesses, such as a lack of awareness of cyber security risks.
There are various controls in risk management frameworks or compliance standards meant to reduce the risk from these threats occurring from these common cyber threat vectors.
FortifyData cyber threat assessments are automated and continuous assessments of your organization giving you up to date findings on the latest vulnerabilities, threats and risks facing the attack surface of your organization – be it internal, external, cloud or third-party. This helps with defense and prevention by addressing vulnerabilities with external attack surface, patching which can thwart zero-day, identify areas for injection for cross site scripting or SQL injections, compromise via unpatched vulnerabilities that could lead to malware/ransomware; we conduct third-party risk management to identify and help you plan to reduce risk in your supply chain.
Our consolidated capabilities have helped many companies improve their cybersecurity posture and reduce the risk that these 8 common cyber threats pose to an organization.
FortifyData automates a lot of the steps and processes, incorporates templates and consolidates the cyber threat assessments tool capabilities into one platform. Our assessments align with, and can supplement, annual threat assessments done by your team, external teams or consultants.
Looking to automate cyber threat assessments? Let’s start small and schedule your complimentary external assessment to see what we find. It’s non-intrusive and conducts asset identification and reconnaissance like threat actors do; see how a hacker sees you.
What are the 7 Types of Cyber Security Threats? (Basics of Cyber Security)
The 7 types of cyber security threats, a subset of the top 10 cyber security threats, that can harm your organization and are initiated from an external vector are:
- Malware: Malicious software (malware) encompasses a wide range of threats, including viruses, worms, Trojans, ransomware, and spyware. These programs can steal data, disrupt operations, and damage systems.
- Phishing: Phishing attacks attempt to trick users into revealing sensitive information, such as login credentials or credit card details. These attacks often use emails or SMS messages that appear to be from legitimate sources.
- Ransomware: Ransomware encrypts a victim’s data, making it inaccessible. Attackers then demand a ransom payment to decrypt the data.
- Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks: DoS attacks overwhelm a system with traffic, making it unavailable to legitimate users.
- Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) Attacks: MitM attacks intercept communication between two parties, allowing the attacker to steal data or modify messages.
- Zero-Day Attacks: Zero-day attacks exploit vulnerabilities in software that the software vendor is not yet aware of. These attacks can be particularly dangerous because there is no patch available to fix the vulnerability.
- Social Engineering: Social engineering attacks exploit human psychology to trick victims into giving up sensitive information or clicking on malicious links.
While we’ve focused on the eight most common threats, it’s important to understand the foundational principles of cybersecurity. Here are some core security concepts to consider:
- Confidentiality: Ensuring information is only accessible to authorized users.
- Integrity: Maintaining the accuracy and completeness of data.
- Availability: Guaranteeing authorized users have access to information and systems when needed.
And some of the basics of cybersecurity that an organization can implement are the following (which FortifyData can help automate and manage). These are fundamental elements that many will remember from their information security and IT training:
- Asset management and identification
- Risk management
- Access management
- Threat management
- Security controls
- Disaster recovery and business continuity
- Incident management
- Security education, training, and awareness
What are the 10 Types of Cyber Attacks?
We have covered the 10 types of cyber attacks in a bit more detail as part of our cyber threat assessments article that also included some common prevention and mitigation steps. A review of the top 10 types of cyber attacks is found here:
- Phishing / Social Engineering: This age-old tactic continues to be highly effective, tricking users into clicking malicious links or attachments that compromise systems. A variant of this is spear phishing, targeting specific individuals within an organization, is particularly dangerous. Exploiting human psychology, social engin
- Malware / Ransomware: Ransomware, a type of malware, encrypts critical data, rendering it inaccessible until a ransom is paid. Ransomware attacks can cripple operations, cause financial losses, and damage an organization’s reputation. Malware, more broadly, encompasses various malicious software programs, including viruses, worms, and Trojan horses, designed to steal data, disrupt operations, or gain unauthorized access. Malware can be the result of exploited vulnerabilities in an organization’s external or internal assets, networks or services.
- Supply Chain Attacks / Third-Party Compromise: Targeting vulnerabilities in third-party vendors or software can provide attackers with a backdoor into an organization’s network or access your organization’s data that may be processed or stored at the third-party. A third-party cyber risk management program is essential, and sometimes required by industry or government compliance to some degree, to ensure you are aware of the cyber risks that a third-party introduces to your organization. Traditionally, this was a back-and-forth questionnaire process, but now there are services to view external vulnerabilities of a third-party and/or specific services they provide to you.
- Cloud Vulnerabilities: As cloud adoption accelerates, so do cloud-based threats. Misconfigurations, insecure storage practices, and inadequate access controls can leave sensitive data exposed.
- Internet of Things (IoT) Vulnerabilities: The proliferation of connected devices introduces new attack surfaces. Unsecured IoT devices can be exploited to launch botnet attacks or gain access to internal networks.
- Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks: DoS attacks overwhelm a system, network, or website, causing it to become unavailable to users.
- Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) Attacks: MitM attacks occur when a malicious actor intercepts and potentially alters communication between two parties.
- SQL Injection: SQL injection involves exploiting vulnerabilities in database software to gain unauthorized access or manipulate data.
- Zero-Day Exploits: Zero-day exploits target vulnerabilities that are unknown to the software vendor or the public.
- Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): XSS attacks inject malicious scripts into websites that are then viewed by other users.
Examining some of the biggest cyber attacks in history illustrates the real-world impact of these threats. Understanding these historical events can help us learn valuable lessons for improving our present-day defenses.
Biggest cyber attacks in history:
- Cam4 Data Breach (2020) – 10.88bn records
- Yahoo Data Breach (2017) – 3bn accounts
- Aadhar Data Breach (2018) – 1.1bn people
- Alibaba Data Breach (2022) – 1.1bn users
- First American Financial Corporation Data Breach (2019) – 885m users
There have been many prominent attacks in terms of size of financial cost or impact to operations such as WannaCry, NotPetya, and Experian, LinkedIn, Facebook, Starwood data breaches to mention a few more.
The eight main cyber security threats we’ve explored pose a significant risk to organizations of all sizes. By understanding these threats and implementing appropriate security measures, you can significantly reduce your risk of a cyber attack.
Prevention and defense against the 8 main cyber threats will greatly improve your organization’s cyber security posture. FortifyData has helped clients improve their posture against the 8 main cyber threats by automating risk management and continuously assessing their attack surface.
FortifyData offers a comprehensive platform that automates cyber threat assessments to include cyber asset attack surface management, vulnerability management, prioritizes risks, dark web and cyber threat intelligence enrichment, third party risk assessments and simplifies compliance.
