In this publication of Visual Capitalist we can see clearly the most significant cyber attacks in the period 2006-2020.
As original images post says «A “significant” cyber attack refers to a hack into a country’s government agency, a defense or high-tech company, or a crime with losses of more than $1M«.
The most common cyber attacks techniqes are:
1/ Structured Query Language (SQL) Injection Attack
SQL is the code used to communicate with a database. In an SQL injection attack, the hacker writes vindictive SQL code and inserts it into a victim’s database, in order to access private information.
2/ A man-in-the-middle (MitM)
This form of attack happens when a cyber criminal hacks into a communication channel between two people, and eavesdrops on their online exchanges.
3/ Phishing Attack
When a cyber criminal poses as a legitimate institution and emails a victim to gain personal details like login credentials, home address, credit card information.
4/ Denial of Service Attack (DoS)
This involves flooding a victim’s system with traffic, to the point where their network is inaccessible. The hacker doesn’t gain any valuable information from this style of attack.
I think this is interesting from an economic point of view, specifically in two ways for CFO/finance professional:
1/ The ability to value the cost of this type of intangible threat.
2/ The importances of servers and cloud architecture at the core of business and the need of diversify this new type of risk.
Like the whole new economy, which is based on intangible assets, economists have an obligation to focus on the management of our clients from this point of view; risks and their consequences are more based on intangible assets and we have to develop other types of intellectual tools. At least we have to adapt it.
