How can you protect yourself on the Internet?

In phishing, the attacker primarily tries to obtain a user’s sensitive data. The main goal includes looting an account or taking over the identity. A phishing attack mainly starts with an email, which is customized by the attacker. As a result, the victim is lured to a fraudulent website where personal data is grabbed. Spear phishing, on the other hand, is a threat to a specific organization or person. The attacker disguises himself as an employee, friend, or even business partner.

To protect yourself against such threats, you should never click on the links in a dubious mail. Furthermore, you should always check the address bar in your browser and never open the attachments of a suspicious email.

A Trojan is a computer program that performs completely different functions or pursues completely different motives in the background. For example, the user is manipulated by a social engineering trick into downloading a program that is loaded with malware. A widespread Trojan is called a crypto Trojan (ransomware). Here, the intruder gains access to the system in order to encrypt sensitive data afterward and demand a ransom to get this data back.

In order to protect oneself on the Internet and to counteract these dangers, one should be careful where the software is downloaded from since on many platforms it is no longer possible to guarantee a check that is tailored to each software.

E-mail attachments should never be opened in doubt of the unique sender.

In a DoS attack, a service is deliberately overloaded with requests, as a result of which the system can no longer handle the essential tasks and, in the worst case, collapse. Such attacks can be traced back to vulnerabilities in programs and operating systems. Often, the attackers control multiple machines, creating a so-called botnet. The botnet contains a network with several infected computers, which are interconnected via the Internet and administered by the so-called “botmaster”.

An appropriate response is crucial to counteract such attacks and to protect against them on the Internet. The system should be regularly checked for security vulnerabilities in order to take preventive action against them.

Malware is a harmful computer program. The malicious functions run in the background and are not visible to the user. The main damage that occurs would be, among other things, that files are deleted or manipulated.

Security software, such as antivirus scanners, can help by quarantining or blocking malicious software. One disadvantage would be that virus scanners mainly perform signature-based detections, which means that only known malware can be detected. Regular updating of these software solutions is mandatory – it does not replace an IDS/IPS solution or network segmentation.

Passwords should be chosen carefully and meet certain quality requirements to ensure that they serve their purpose. Cybercriminals have tools that automatically try out all possible combinations of characters (brute force attack) to obtain access data.

A password should consist of letters, numbers, and special characters and have a length of at least 16 characters. Password managers help the user to manage different passwords well and to promote the associated corporate policies in the context of “secure password”.