{"id":69438,"date":"2023-10-04T09:39:13","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T13:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jumpcloud.com\/?p=69438"},"modified":"2023-10-27T13:09:06","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T17:09:06","slug":"common-sme-cyberattacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jumpcloud.com\/blog\/common-sme-cyberattacks","title":{"rendered":"6 Common Cyberattacks That Threaten SMEs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) organization is calling on all of us to \u201cSecure Our World,\u201d with a simple message that calls everyone to action \u201cto adopt ongoing cybersecurity habits and improved online safety behaviors.\u201d This month, the JumpCloud blog will focus on helping you empower everyone in your organization to do their part regarding cybersecurity. Tune in throughout the month for more cybersecurity content written specifically for IT professionals.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n When we think of cyberattacks, we tend to envision the biggest and most disastrous ones \u2014 ones that involve well-known companies, expose tons of important data, and cause some serious fallout and public mistrust. While these attacks are real and dangerous, they\u2019re not the only ones out there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The reality is that cyberattacks affect businesses of all sizes and in all industries. Sometimes, our focus on the big ones can eclipse the less flashy ones that are just as dangerous to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). According to Accenture\u2019s latest Cost of Cybercrime Study<\/a>, 43% of cyber attacks are aimed at small businesses\u2026 but unfortunately only about 14% feel they have the right tools and resources in place to properly protect themselves from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mounting a viable defense starts with understanding what you\u2019re up against \u2014 and even understanding the basics of common threats and defense measures can go a long way. The following are six of the most common attack vectors that can hit SMEs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Because the largest ransomware attacks tend to dominate news cycles, many people don\u2019t realize that ransomware attacks on SMEs are common as well. In fact, 50-70% of ransomware attacks<\/strong><\/a> are aimed at small businesses<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ransomware generally follows the same basic principles in attacks of all sizes: adversaries seize and lock a company\u2019s data or assets and promise to return them upon payment of a ransom. For large enterprises, these ransoms can reach into the millions. For SMEs, they are often smaller \u2014 ransoms as low as $10,000<\/a> are common. While this may sound like a silver lining for SMEs, there\u2019s a darker motive at play: adversaries know SMEs will pay them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For established enterprises with decades of built-up resources, six-figure ransoms and the downtime associated with an attack are painful, but not often a death sentence. For SMEs with tighter resources, this isn\u2019t always the case \u2014 the downtime and loss of data access alone can be crippling for a tightly run SME. To adversaries, this means SMEs will fight to get their data back \u2014 so they demand a \u201creasonable\u201d ransom and can expect with near certainty that the SME will pay it. According to research, more than half<\/a> of them do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The ramifications of a data breach to your employees, customers, partners, and reputation are grave: a Ponemon study<\/a> found that 65% of consumers whose data was breached lost trust in the company that experienced the breach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s more, paying the ransom doesn\u2019t guarantee that your data hasn\u2019t been compromised or shared when under the adversary\u2019s control. Of the 59% of SMEs who said they had paid a ransom in a survey, only 23%<\/a> got all their data back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, paying up can endanger your organization further: it tells hackers that you are willing and able to pay ransoms to reclaim your data. And now that they\u2019re familiar with your defenses and architecture, they\u2019ll have an easier time attacking you again. Unfortunately, repeat attacks are highly likely \u2014 either from the same criminal organization, or from another organization that the attackers sold your information to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s more, the latest Verizon Data Breach and Incident Report<\/a> indicates that with the data they have access to, in partnership with the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), it loks as though the amount paid to adversaries may be decreasing\u2026 but that the cost to recover from a ransomware attack is in fact trending in the opposite direction. According to this report, the calculated median cost of an attack (for those that reported a loss) more than doubled to over $26,000 (USD), with a range of anywhere from $1 to $2.25 million! It seems that the long term effects of an attack like this are multitudes more damaging than the incident itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of us are familiar with supply chain attacks, where an infection starts with a large corporation and spreads as it comes into contact with other businesses through the supply chain. And while we\u2019re likely to hear about supply chain attacks on large businesses, news sources don\u2019t always report on their trickle-down effects on smaller businesses in the supply chain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In supply chain attacks, SMEs aren\u2019t usually direct targets, but rather casualties resulting from a larger breach. Thus, large supply chain attacks have ramifications on many of the target organization\u2019s partners, customers, or vendors. In REvil\u2019s attack on Kaseya\u2019s VSA software<\/a>, for example, many of those impacted were SMEs that used the product. In another example, the famous SolarWinds breach<\/a> was originally believed to have affected a few dozen organizations. It actually impacted over 250.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n1. Ransomware <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What Ransomware Looks Like for SMEs<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Ramifications<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
2. Supply Chain Attacks <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How Supply Chain Attacks Affect SMEs<\/h3>\n\n\n\n