Guidelines for Dealing with a Supplier's Data Leakage
The COVID-19 pandemic has seen a significant surge in cyberattacks, with a 42% increase compared to 2021. This trend continues into 2025, as businesses across various industries, including automotive companies, steel manufacturers, and prisons, become targets for cyber criminals.
Phishing remains the most common type of cyberattack, accounting for a large portion of these incidents. These attacks often involve fake domains that mimic legitimate organizations, aiming to obtain access credentials or introduce malware.
Ransomware attacks, a particularly dangerous form of cyberattack, have seen a 126% increase in early 2025. These attacks encrypt or lock computer systems, demanding ransom for data access. Attackers remain hidden while gathering data before demanding ransom.
Another growing threat is AI-powered phishing and social engineering, with a 442% rise in 2024. Attackers use generative AI to create more convincing emails, voice, and video phishing, including deepfake content that is hard to detect by traditional security systems.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have also risen by 41% in 2024. These attacks involve botnets overwhelming targets with traffic, disrupting services and causing financial damage. Automated bot attacks increased by 60%, particularly against retail and healthcare sectors.
Other common threats include defense evasion, drive-by downloads, malware (such as Remote Access Trojans targeting vulnerable IoT devices), insider threats, and supply chain attacks compromising the trustworthiness of software or hardware vendors.
Recognizing these attacks is crucial. Businesses should look out for suspicious employee actions like clicking malicious links, unusual system behavior, compromised credentials, or sudden service disruptions. Effective responses involve robust employee training, deploying endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems, strong email security tools, network monitoring, and incident response plans.
If a data breach has occurred, the priority should be to secure your data immediately to minimize impact on your business. This can be achieved by fixing vulnerabilities in your systems, starting a breach response team, informing and training your team, and integrating multifactor authentication methods. It is recommended to integrate multifactor authentication methods such as two-factor authentication or the more advanced phishing-resistant MFA.
Training employees to recognize phishing emails, messages, and phone calls is essential in preventing phishing attacks. Credential stuffing can be prevented by integrating multifactor authentication software into your cybersecurity or having employees change their passwords immediately.
In the event of a vendor data breach, it's important to gather information from the affected vendor about the nature and extent of the breach. Good questions to ask a vendor after a cyberattack include whether the attacks are still occurring, if the data breach has been stopped, how the attackers gained access, if there was an information leak, if it was intentional, if the vendor has cyber insurance, and if the vendor will cover legal fees for breach notification obligations.
If your business is being impersonated, contact your bank immediately to stop all transactions and reach out to financial and legal counsel to mitigate damage. Identity and financial fraud is often the end goal of cyberattacks, allowing cyberattackers to impersonate a business and make purchases in its name.
In summary, businesses face multifaceted, increasingly sophisticated cyber threats that must be met with layered, proactive defenses combining technology, training, and conscious monitoring. If your organization is facing a cyberattack, it's crucial to respond quickly and efficiently to minimize the impact on your business.
- As businesses continue to be targeted in the increasing wave of cyberattacks, prioritizing cybersecurity measures, such as robust employee training and deploying endpoint detection and response systems, becomes essential.
- With ransomware attacks rising, businesses should be aware of the dangers they pose and take steps like implementing strong email security tools and network monitoring to mitigate the threat.
- AI-powered phishing and social engineering, a growing threat, requires businesses to look out for sophisticated phishing tactics using generative AI and deepfake content that traditional security systems may find hard to detect.
- In the event of a vendor data breach, it's crucial to ask about the nature and extent of the breach, the vendor's cyber insurance coverage, and their plans for covering legal fees, to minimize potential financial and reputational damage.
