Among various online threats that businesses face, cyber extortion is a major crime carried out by organized forces. Criminals aim to extract money from businesses by accessing sensitive business data, files, and even some hardware they hold as ransom and demanding money in exchange. In short, you can consider this description of cybercrime as cyber extortion definition.
The Modality Of Cyber Extortion
Having understood what is cyber extortion, let us look into some techniques and tactics deployed by cybercriminals to achieve their goals. Most of the techniques of cyber extortionists have many things in common, although the modus operandi might be slightly different. The common aspects include breaching the security of the IT systems to gain unlawful access to computer hardware, networks, and software and rendering these non-functional. Then the criminals demand money from the company with the condition that they would allow the company to use the system again only after receiving the money.
How Ransomware Works?
Ransomware is a popular technique of extracting money from businesses by crippling the IT system. Usually, cybercriminals target some employees of the company and engage in an email conversation and allure them to click on some link inserted within the message for some apparent gain. Soon after clicking the link, the ransomware starts working and infects the entire system, becoming defunct. The ransomware encrypts your servers and data, thereby making it inaccessible. The hacker restores the system by handing over the encryption keys only when they receive the sum of money demanded by them.
So now you understand what is cyber extortion and how it works.
DDoS Attack
DDoS is another method that cybercriminals use to extract money from the victims. DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service is a kind of cyber attack that disrupts business operations and compels business owners to settle the issue by paying the criminals what they demand. Unlike Ransomware, which halts business operations completely by denying access to the IT system, DDoS acts in a different way. Although the IT systems remain functional, the criminals use a technique that makes the server crash. The criminals launch the attack by directing an incredibly vast amount of messages to the server, thereby overloading it so that it ultimately crashes.
When the companies realize their server is under attack, it is already late. Unless the company settles the issue with the criminals by paying the demanded sum of money, there is no other way to get out of the mess.
Taking Protection
Is there any way to seek protection? Indeed, companies take various measures to dispel cyber attacks by deploying robust security systems. The security tools can detect the possible attacks quite early through constant system surveillance and detecting suspicious activities. But still, it is impossible to guarantee the complete protection of the IT systems as criminals use newer techniques of breaching the systems in innovative ways.
Besides the technical approach of protecting organizations from cyber extortion, taking Cyber extortion insurance cover can help minimize the financial impact when preventing the attack is impossible.
