Over the last decade, there has been an alarming increase of crime that is committed through the Internet. You will no doubt have seen numerous high profile examples in the news such as the attacks on Twitter and PayPal last year. If even the biggest companies in the world can fall foul of these criminals, then you can see how bad the situation is.
The government has recently dedicated large sums to help fight cyber crime but despite this, it is predicted that cyber attacks will continue to increase for some time. Between 2006 and 2015, it has been reported that the cyber attacks increased by 1300% (figures show 5,500 incidents in 2006 up to 77,000 in 2015). Following this, 2016 was another terrible year for cyber crime with some of the biggest attacks to date.
Cyber attacks are not just targeting the big companies either, there has been an increasing rate of incidents where households and smaller businesses have been targeted in new ways of extracting money through online crime. You may have heard about ransomware, a technique that is used to attack a PC, scramble data and then hold the owner to ransom by restoring the data for a fee. With these kinds of attacks, it is difficult to see an end to the cyber war.
The more efforts made by technology experts and the government to combat this crime, the more efforts that criminals put in to find a new way of using the Internet for criminal activity. Most large companies will have sophisticated software to protect them and have robust back up plans to ensure they can retrieve lost data. If you are looking to increase your back up options, whether for personal use or for your business, there are a number of different methods you can use. Cloud storage is a good option, or if you prefer you can go for external hard drives, flash drives etc. to keep a back up of your data. Unfortunately, sometimes hard drives can fail and cause you to lose data. There are companies that can help you to recover files though, through services like SSD data recovery.
If you are concerned about being a victim of a cyber attack then you can get more information and guidance from dedicated websites set up by the government. The best thing you will ever do is look into appropriate lines of defense against cyber crime. You may think that you are currently doing enough to protect your data but if you keep up to date with latest cyber crime news and recommended actions to take, then you will stand a much better chance than if you don’t do anything.
This year will see even more cyber attacks and even more lost data, so be aware and always be suspicious of unusual emails or other online contact that doesn’t feel right. The cyber war looks to be a long one, so the more you know about how to try and prevent attacks, the more prepared you will be for what is still to come.