Reports ID threats to businesses in 2020

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According to new data out from Barracuda there has been a 400% increase in domain spoofing attacks, with more than 2,000 attacks attempted in November 2019, alone. These attacks are being used to hijack conversations and are a type of phishing attack that is on the rise, though it’s still not considered one of the top threats to businesses online.

As part of the attack, cybercriminals insert themselves into the online conversation with a business or start a completely new conversation with the intent of compromising accounts to leverage them for money or other goods or services. They will impersonate domain names, sometimes changing a single letter or a Top Level Domain for their plot.

To defend against such attacks, Barracuda suggests businesses monitor company inboxes, account logins and domain registrations, deploy protection against account takeovers, and train employees to recognize these types of attacks. More data form Barracuda can be found here.

Meanwhile, new data out from Zix/AppRiver indicates that despite concerns over the safety of AI for businesses, a growing number of small the mid-sized businesses are moving ahead with AI adoption. Their Q4 Cyberthreat Index for Business Survey found that about 93% of SMB execs believe other countries will attempt to use small businesses to as part of their cyberwar strategy. Because of this more than half (62%) say they’ll increase their cybersecurity budgets moving forward.

“In 2019, we saw cyberattacks on our government trickle down from large agencies to smaller local municipalities and schools,” said Dave Wagner, CEO, Zix. “That follows the pattern we’ve seen in business, where attacks have expanded from big corporations to small- and medium-sized businesses. While these attacks can originate from anywhere, the survey data shows that SMBs believe foreign actors and even nation-states may be targeting them as the first step toward access to larger companies or government agencies.”

As to the steps most SMBs are taking, just over half say they’ll employ more cybersecurity tech and work to create better security awareness among their employees.

More data from the Zix/AppRiver report can be found here.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kristina Knight-1
Kristina Knight, Journalist , BA
Content Writer & Editor
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Kristina Knight is a freelance writer with more than 15 years of experience writing on varied topics. Kristina’s focus for the past 10 years has been the small business, online marketing, and banking sectors, however, she keeps things interesting by writing about her experiences as an adoptive mom, parenting, and education issues. Kristina’s work has appeared with BizReport.com, NBC News, Soaps.com, DisasterNewsNetwork, and many more publications.