Cyber-criminals are seeing more and more media attention lately as they are targeting global companies casing fear throughout the business world. Many of the cyber-criminals are harmless and just showing off their skills, but there are some cyber-criminal groups that are threatening company network security systems demanding ransoms to not destroy important data.

Cyber Crime a Global Problem

Cyber-crime affects companies around the world and is especially predominant in the US, Europe, and Asia. Ransom is the number one demand of most cyber-criminals with the threat of data destruction, system freeze-outs or the leakage of important data.

While some hackers use programs known as ransomware, to hold data “hostage”, others merely threaten a DDoS attack to extort money from the companies. Industry experts believe that a large number of these cyber-attacks are mere bluffs. Emails are sent out to the company expressing the hackers intentions and a request for ransom is made. Some companies pay out immediately for fear of losing important data which could cost them both time and money long term.

These scare tactics are usually done by hackers pretending to be much larger cyber-crime groups such as the Phantom Squad, Fancy Bear, Armada Collective or Anonymous. This claimed notoriety is sometimes enough to make companies pay up to protect their company network security.

What to Do in The Event of a Cyber Attack

If you receive an email demanding a ransom to prevent a cyber-attack, you should be concerned, but you should not pay. Instead, deploy a scrubbing service, ACL/BGP reconfiguration, as well as the usual DDoS protection essentials to assure uptime and SLAs. This will protect your data and prevent a cyber-attack from taking place. Paying the cyber-criminal will only result in an increase in cyber-crime and more ransom-related attacks.

Cyber-crime affects everyone. From small businesses to global corporations, cyber-criminals see an easy target and have found it easier than ever to make a profit from unwitting business owners. Protecting your corporate data is important and you should always take precautions to safeguard your company network security.