The Problem of Cyberattacks and Criminal Activities
Major data breaches have significantly increased due to advanced cybercriminal approaches leading to negative effects on online activities. Phishing activities are popular, with many social engineering attacks used to steal user credentials, including banking and login credentials, and send fraudulent information (“phishing – Glossary | CSRC”, 2022). The only way of making people understand the problems is by giving them appropriate solutions for mitigating the problem and learning about the problem itself. The problem of cyberattacks and criminal activities is increasing at a high rate. People should know how these attacks can happen by opening bad links and being victims of malicious activities.
- Do not click on any links that ask for the user’s personal information treating the request with ample suspicion (Moon, 2022).
- The users need to check the email address of the sender source to verify the authenticity of the link sender. The addresses can often be questionable, standing out from the near-perfect emails and telling users to click on some external link.
- Website URLs with typing errors must be avoided as they tend to be harmful and non-authentic (“What Is a Malicious URL? (And How You Can Avoid Them)”, 2022).
- Hover over every link before clicking the click, check the full address and whether it is shortened or not (“How to Test a Suspicious Link Without Clicking It”, 2022).
- Random looking elongated links must be avoided as they lead to malicious activities.
- Prizes and offers coming with suspicious links and unbelievable promises of a large amount of money must be avoided as they always prove fake.
- The user can use a good VPN, firewall and antivirus to maximize the chances of protection from malicious activities being carried out on the website.
Digital transformation has led people to rely on digital technologies to access most daily activities using the Internet. The websites play a major role in their daily lives as they visit web pages that are publically accessible and link with specific information. However, individuals are trying to utilize the websites unethically, gaining access to the victim’s personal information. The criminals use fake websites and malicious links to disguise fraudulent pages that might negatively impact the victim. Thus, these malicious websites must be identified, verified if authentic and reported accordingly to protect the future from the presence of fake websites. The criminals tend to use these links and web pages to infect victims, who once click on the fake website, get infected by malicious ransomware or Trojans. These viruses in the computer can generate random spam, lock personal contents, slow device performance, or infect connected devices. The fact of “phishing” makes the criminal use fake websites to lure the victims by putting in personal information that would be used for the personal gains of the criminal. Thus, these websites are needed to be detected and mitigated with urgency to reduce the issues that can occur from clicking the websites. The fake links can be discovered the most in emails, ads, social media, and torrent websites.
The steps taken for addressing the fake web pages are:-
- The fake links can be identified and distinguished from real web pages; thus, being vigilant about online use and treating all the links with equal care would make the problem a lot easier in the first place (“The Truth About Clicking Links in Email and What To Do Instead « TipTopSecurity”, 2022).
- The individuals who might be victims should check the short URLs for the web pages to understand if the web page is fake.
- The websites’ spellings, country codes, and domain names must be read to look for discrepancies.
- Contacting the real organization is a good practice to be saved from social engineered websites trying to imitate the big businesses to gain personal information.
- There are website checkers online that check the websites’ validity (“7 Quick Sites That Let You Check If a Link Is Safe”, 2022).
- Individuals must avoid dealing with unconventional offers that require one to provide personal information or banking details.
Third-party applications are the software built by other companies than the device manufacturer on which the application would run or operate with the operating system’s help. Digital transformation has led people to use third-party applications on their devices to increase their productivity in their day-to-day activities and businesses. The security updates are done on the third-party applications in the device. The security updates are in place for upgrading the applications to mitigate the vulnerabilities or bugs present in the software that might affect the functionalities. The software patching is vital for addressing the potential vulnerabilities that cybercriminals might exploit (ManageEngine, 2022). Software updates and patches are necessary for enhancing the application’s performance, upgrading its features, and reducing the vulnerabilities that can come from them.
Steps of ensuring the third-party application gets updated are:
- The upgrades and patches can be done once the status of the patches to be deployed in the application of the same device are determined.
- The applications are listed together from all the endpoints to monitor which patches are presently available and need to be deployed.
- The risks and vulnerabilities are classified to be mitigated if the present patch is available
- If the patches are present, they are applied to the required application leading to fixing the issue (“Third-Party Patching: Everything You Need to Know”, 2022).
- There should be control measures with security features to mitigate the risk of the third-party application as much as possible; if there is no present patch available.
Thus patch management requires establishing the asset management strategies and prioritizing the vulnerabilities to be remediated with appropriate measures. There should be measures on how the security upgrades work on the present application and create value meeting the needs.
Addressing the Fake Webpages Problem
The web browsers need to be secured as people use the Internet almost all day to carry out daily activities; however, they tend to suffer from various security issues. Some of the common threats are found in the browsers. Thus, protecting the browsers is important in keeping the browsers up-to-date. The browser should be automatically updated for the browsers. The browsers should secure the websites from pop-ups, phishing, and irregular plug-ins (Panda Security, 2022). The passwords should not be stored inside the current browsers, disabling the present third-party caches and cookies.
The process starts with setting a default browser to start at start-ups. The browser should have set policies to be updated automatically, installing required updates. The unwanted plug-ins and pop-ups must be blocked accordingly (Patrizio, 2022). Configuration of the security and privacy of the browser allows for tracking of necessary activities conducted over the Internet. The browser should understand how to mitigate the risks occurring from Java, JavaScript, SQL and cookies. There should be alerts given of breaches of security stating current issues. Antiviruses should be present to mitigate the issues from malware, Trojan, and other unwanted attacks on vulnerable third-party applications (“Securing Your Web Browser | CISA”, 2022). The websites should use HTTPS or hypertext transfer protocol secured, a secured version of the HTTP allowing an additional layer of security for increasing data security during data transfer.
Conclusion:
The rise of using the Internet for daily activities has been the new norm for men and women worldwide. As the world moves fast with technological advancement, so do cyber-criminal activities’ chances of being attacked. Websites have significantly increased as people tend to rely more on online services. Cybercriminals tend to negatively utilise the opportunity, sending in harmful links to the user’s computer to gain access to personal information and credentials. Thus, the understanding is provided on ways of minimizing clicking bad links without considering risks, addressing the fake web addresses that link to other sites, ensuring security updates of third party software by getting patched or upgraded and configuring the best setting for the web browser of the user for ensuring security.
References:
7 Quick Sites That Let You Check If a Link Is Safe. (2022). Retrieved 19 April 2022, from https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/4-quick-sites-that-let-you-check-if-links-are-safe/
Article: Securing web browsers | F-Secure. (2022). Retrieved 19 April 2022, from https://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/articles/securing-web-browsers.shtml (“Article: Securing web browsers | F-Secure”, 2022)
How to Test a Suspicious Link Without Clicking It. (2022). Retrieved 19 April 2022, from https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-test-a-suspicious-link-without-clicking-it-2487171
ManageEngine, c. (2022). Third Party Applications Patch Management | ManageEngine Patch Manager Plus. Retrieved 19 April 2022, from https://www.manageengine.com/patch-management/third-party-applications-patch-management.html
Moon, B. (2022). Don’t Click On Strange Links: 6 Tips To Avoid Phishing Attacks. Retrieved 19 April 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradmoon/2016/01/14/how-to-avoid-becoming-a-victim-of-phishing/?sh=5c43b5e443f6
Patrizio, A. (2022). 10 tips for a secure browsing experience. Retrieved 19 April 2022, from https://www.idginsiderpro.com/article/3539828/10-tips-for-a-secure-browsing-experience.html
Phishing – Glossary | CSRC. (2022). Retrieved 19 April 2022, from https://csrc.nist.gov/glossary/term/phishing
Securing Your Web Browser | CISA. (2022). Retrieved 19 April 2022, from https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/publications/securing-your-web-browser
Security, P. (2022). Top 10 tips for safer, more secure web browsing – Panda Security. Retrieved 19 April 2022, from https://www.pandasecurity.com/en/mediacenter/mobile-news/tips-browsing-safer/
The Truth About Clicking Links in Email and What To Do Instead « TipTopSecurity. (2022). Retrieved 19 April 2022, from https://tiptopsecurity.com/the-truth-about-clicking-links-in-email-and-what-to-do-instead/
Third-Party Patching: Everything You Need to Know. (2022). Retrieved 19 April 2022, from https://www.kaseya.com/blog/2021/02/18/third-party-patching/
What Is a Malicious URL? (And How You Can Avoid Them). (2022). Retrieved 19 April 2022, from https://cheapsslsecurity.com/blog/what-is-a-malicious-url/
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