How a Zero Day impact businesses that deal with customer data collection, credit card or other payment information?

Zero-Day attacks are caused by technical issues developers or tech vendors aren’t yet aware of. These attacks (also referred to as Day Zero) take advantage of glitches, leaving developers or vendors in a bind in order to correct the problem. The name of these attacks comes from the number of days developers have known about these vulnerabilities.

Why technical issues matter in Zero-Day attacks

 First, it’s crucial to understand an attack and a flaw in one’s system:

• Flaws or vulnerabilities are technical issues that haven’t been discovered yet.
• Attacks or exploits are concrete ways a software is used by a bad actor.

Most organizations and developers pride themselves in testing their products to ensure it works both safely and correctly, but Zero-Day attacks truly take advantage of information tech workers don’t know. Cybercriminals often extract information, data, and find other ways to cause problems for a new program by installing spyware or malware, and can often cause undue damage to users of a particular app or software.

Why Zero-Day attacks are a threat

It’s difficult to implement protective measures against zero-day attacks because there’s almost no way researchers or testers can ward off against unknown or undiscovered vulnerabilities. Most Zero-Day attacks only become known once confidential data becomes compromised because of Trojan horses, viruses, and other hacks that shouldn’t have happened to begin with.

Antivirus software and other mechanisms may not be able to prevent a Zero-Day attack because they may not even be capable of doing so until the breach or malware has been discovered. Imagine believing that you locked your door and going about your day, but a burglar may find that your door is in fact unlocked and then proceeds to take everything they can find because of your innocent mistake. Zero-Day attacks are basically like this. If the thief is smart, they may only take a few things, and you might not even know about it until you look for it and discover it’s gone.

Resolving issues after a Zero-Day attack

Once a breach or problem is found, organizations have the option to let the public know, discuss this with partners, or keep information closed. The way in which organizations reveal their Zero-Day attack depends on who they work for and the level of panic that may occur, or other factors. Next, a software patch, or solution to the Zero-Day attack will be designed to finally fix the problem.

Also known as a software fix, a patch does the following:

• Upgrades softwares
• Fixes technical issues
• Solves security concern

Protecting against Zero-Day attacks

It’s crucial to have processes in place that give you plenty of time to add security software code into your programs or apps in order to prevent Zero-Day attacks. A few other prevention methods include:

• Always have a back-up plan and strategy in place.
• Train staff, partners, and users on how to recognize malware, phishing attempts, and strategies used by cybercriminals to gain trust and extort information.
• Use security controls, firewalls, and data controls.
• Implement security techniques such as micro-segmentation, or cloud systems that enable you to break segments down to individuals, to make it harder for bad actors to glean confidential or sensitive data from your software.
• Update your software regularly to make it harder for attackers to recognize your code and possible flaws.

Businesses that deal with data collection, save credit card or other payment information, or are considered trustworthy should always have a Zero-Day attack and prevention strategy to avoid harm to their users, and reputation.

If you want to learn more about cybersecurity threats, trends, and solutions, Contact us to learn more today!