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New technologies, apart from making many people’s lives more comfortable, have also favored the appearance of new risks / computer threats. The case at hand is, once again, cybersecurity.
The IT risks to which SMEs are subjected make it advisable to hire cybersecurity insurance. But what about computer security in homes? In the same way that computers are vital for companies, today they are also vital for a large number of families: paying bills, contracting services, online shopping, etc. Therefore, in order to be well protected, we must know what computer threats we may have to face.
Here is a list of 7 computer threats that knowing can help prevent them.
Cybersecurity against the following computer threats
Computer viruses
It is perhaps the most well-known problem to the general public. It is a code that infects an executable program and spreads by copying itself and infecting other programs. Therefore, for a virus to start working, it requires a person to activate that infected program.
The most effective way to protect yourself is by keeping your antivirus updated and avoiding opening any untrusted programs.
Worms
Very similar to computer viruses, with the difference that they do not need any human to activate them, since they are capable of copying themselves and spreading through the network through, for example, the address book of contacts.
They tend to cause more or less serious performance problems, since they use the resources available to the system, such as memory, network bandwidth, servers, etc..
To avoid worms, apart from having an updated antivirus, it is also advisable to be careful with file-sharing networks.
Trojans
They are so called because their way of acting is reminiscent of the story of the Trojan horse. They are disguised when apparently legal programs are downloaded and, although this threat does not harm the computer or spread, it allows hackers to control the computer.
Once again, the best cybersecurity protection is caution: download only trustworthy programs and doubt everything you put for free in order to prevent from these computer threats.
Keylogger
Another pretty famous threat. It is usually accompanied by a virus or a Trojan and its function is to record the keystrokes that are made. In this way, the information is recorded in some type of file and can be sent over the internet.
Rootkit
A rootkit is a program designed to give hackers administrative access to your computer without our knowledge. Although they cannot spread automatically (unlike viruses), they can be installed in multiple ways, such as through commercial security products or third-party application extensions.
The best way to protect yourself against these types of computer threats / problems is to use up-to-date antivirus and firewall protection.
DDoS attack
More oriented to companies, a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is a computer security problem that is carried out by generating a large flow of information towards the same destination point. Typically, large numbers of bots are used to produce and send such information. As a result, it is used to collapse the web pages of the target companies or entities due to the extensive bandwidth consumption they cause.
Exploits
Exploits are programs that contain data or codes that take advantage of vulnerabilities in applications installed on the computer. Thus, this type of program uses security gaps that may appear at the time of development of computer programs caused, for example, by errors during the development process. For this same reason, it is difficult for users to know that their computers have been infected by exploits.
In short, there are multiple threats that can put our private data at risk. However, good computer protection, as well as caution when surfing the net, can be good tools to reduce the risks that we may suffer.