With more and more businesses on their journey to a digital transformation, and integrated technologies helping on this journey, it is becoming easier for cybercriminals to launch attacks and breach the security perimeters. And with botnets, the attackers have the ability to easily bring down the infrastructure of an entire enterprise.
A report published by Kaspersky states that there has been a significant increase in the DDoS attacks controlled by botnets. With more and more enterprises encouraging work from home for their employees, the vulnerable security apps of personal devices make it more susceptible to botnet attacks.
Few of the ways that botnets can potentially affect an organization’s business operations are:
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Email Spamming
Organizations across the globe are struggling with email spamming for years now. Since the first spam email, which was sent on January 18, 1994, with the subject “Global Alert for All: Jesus is Coming Soon” was crossed-posted to every available newsgroup, email spamming has become a common practice in the cybersecurity arena.
Today, the spamming technique and tools are continuously innovating as more and more attackers can easily breach business network security.
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Launch of Denial of Service (DoS)
If an organization’s site is vulnerable and it hasn’t adopted the appropriate security measures, hackers have the ability to flood the network with high traffic. This ends up overwhelming the processing power of websites and results in enterprises losing access to their own business, or worse, data. Such bad practices open the backdoor for malware and ransomware and can damage an organization’s reputation.
Read More: Enterprises Fail to Contain Attacks despite Security Response Planning
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Using Botnets for phishing attacks
Phishing is one of the few ways that attackers can steal sensitive information by masquerading as a trusted entity. With botnets, attackers can steal data from employees of organizations, and this may include sensitive and confidential data. Also, attackers can change the addresses of phishing pages once they are blacklisted and can expose vulnerable users to these phishing pages. This enables them to orchestrate various forms of scams.
The types of security breaches caused by Botnets are endless. Hence, organizations must arm themselves with tools, techniques and best practices with preventive measures to tackle botnets’ effects.
Educating employees about the implications of botnets, and the basic security measures can help to combat botnet attacks. Also, as Windows botnets are gaining popularity, the Windows firewall must be enabled across the organizations’ network.
Few precautions to combat botnet attacks
There are various reasons botnet attacks happen. Some of them occur due to the negligence of an Enterprise towards their Security. Some attacks inflicted by botnets are inevitable. However, organizations must have precautionary measures in place that will cost half of what the botnets threat can unleash.
Read More: Enterprise Security Demands a Holistic Approach amid Surging Cyber-attacks
First, it is important for organizations to understand their data. A comprehensive understanding of the data and its area of vulnerabilities is essential for an organization when it comes to fighting the botnet attacks.
Having a backup in place is a no-brainer. It is essential for businesses to secure their data, and update it frequently. If a disaster struck, such as a botnet attack, enterprises can still have a way to function, until the appropriate measures are taken.
The increase in dependency on the Internet has given rise to various forms of botnet threats. Some attacks can be easily tackled; others are huge and expensive to get rid of. Therefore, incorporating the best security practices at an early stage can go a long way in minimizing their effects.
