The different types of cybersecurity incidents include:
- Social Engineering
- Ransomware / Malware
- Password Attacks
- Credential Stuffing
- Business Email Compromise
- Supply Chain Attacks
- Insider Threats
- Web Application Attacks
- IoT Attacks
- Mobile Device Attacks
- Denial-Of-Service Attacks
- Advanced Persistent Threats
- Zero-Day Exploits
- Man-In-The-Middle Attacks
Most small business owners surveyed report that cyberattacks have increased in recent years, and 70% say they’re “highly concerned” by the situation—up 31% since 2020.
They have good reasons to be concerned about cybersecurity. The cost of data breaches for small businesses starts above $100,000, and for companies under 500 employees, it averages $3 million.
Preventing security incidents must now be a top priority for small and mid-sized businesses—beginning by learning what kinds of security incidents to guard against. This article covers the most common cybersecurity incident categories.
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What Is A Security Incident?
A security incident is an unauthorized attempt to access, modify, or destroy an organization’s digital assets and information systems.
Security incidents can range from malware infections and phishing attempts to full-scale data breaches and ransomware attacks, with the average incident now costing small businesses well into six figures.
The key is catching these incidents early – companies typically have less than 62 minutes from first detection to prevent a security incident from becoming a major breach.
Whether it’s a sophisticated cyber attack or an accidental misconfiguration by an employee, these incidents pose serious risks to business operations and data security.
What Causes Security Incidents?
The vast majority of cyber attacks are caused by some form of human error, leveraging the mistakes that people make to gain entry or bypass detection. Those mistakes include everything from recycling passwords and clicking malicious links in phishing emails to neglecting patching or over-granting privileges.
Persistent and frustrating as human errors may be, it suggests that security incidents could drop dramatically with better training and more automation.
Real World Examples Of Security Incidents
Far from a hypothetical threat, security incidents are affecting—and in some cases ending—small businesses across America:
- Brilles: An online sunglasses retailer with just three employees, Brilles was targeted for a DDoS attacks that shut down their website—and sole revenue source—for months. Switching URLs promoted a repeat incident, forcing the company to close permanently.
- G&J Pepsi: When this family-owned bottling plant was hit by a ransomware attack, they refused to pay, instead shutting down everything and working systematically through the incident response process. Despite recovering everything, the attack cost the G&J Pepsi around $25,000 and kept the IT team fully occupied for over six weeks.
- Frank’s Remedies – The solopreneur behind this skin care company clicked an innocent looking email, unaware that it was a phishing scam designed to steal his PayPal login information. Over $2,200 was drained from his account, leaving his business in a precarious financial position.
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What Are The Types Of Security Incidents?
Security incidents comes in many forms, choose different targets, utilize unique tactics, and cause varying degrees of damage—and new versions emerge all the time.
Figuring out how to prevent cyber attacks must include a focus on all these common types of cybersecurity incidents:
1. Social Engineering
Social engineering coerces people to click links, extend access, or provide login credentials by manipulating their psychology. Attackers might use real names, places, dates, and other details (stolen from social media) to appear legitimate and trustworthy, among countless other ways these security incidents occur.
As many as 90% of attacks leverage some form of social engineering, simply because it’s so effective. The damage can be devastating, too, since attacks can potentially bypass security controls and gain direct access to sensitive data.
Learn More: Why Is Social Engineering Effective?
Stopping social engineering takes training and awareness to prevent things like phishing attacks, combined with detection and response since these security incidents have proven notoriously difficult to avoid.
2. Ransomware / Malware
Malware inflicts damage by hiding malicious code inside software. One example is ransomware, where the code either steals or encrypts data, then hackers demand payment to restore access to the data or keep it from being released.
Malware is one of the oldest and most enduring causes of security incidents, and ransomware has been one of the most aggressive and expensive causes in recent years; ransom payments topped $1 billion in 2023, almost double the previous year.
Small businesses can protect themselves from ransomware and other malware with things like antivirus and firewall protections. They also need to understand common ways ransomware spreads through organizations and adapt security policies and training methods in response.
3. Password Attacks
Password attacks often precede information security events since passwords—and other login credentials—are the fastest and easiest way to gain unauthorized access to systems and data.
Ways to get someone’s password include stealing it through phishing attacks, credential stuffing, and brute force—hackers put tremendous energy and ingenuity into this effort.
Identity attacks are some of the most devastating since they are harder to see and stop quickly—and password attacks make up 99% of the 600 million daily identity attacks logged by Microsoft.
Picking strong passwords, replacing them regularly, and enabling multi-factor authentication will all help prevent security incidents, but password discipline is difficult, so incident response must be a priority as well.
Learn More: Sample Password Policy Template
4. Credential Stuffing
Credentials stuffing happens when attackers take databases of known login credentials and use them on other sites and services, hoping to find reused credentials.
Frequent data breaches give attackers access to ever-larger amounts of compromised credentials they can weaponize, and the rise of AI makes it easier than ever to stuff credentials at scale or maximize success rates.
Identity security provider Okta reports that almost a quarter of the identity attacks it observes involve credential stuffing, and security incidents will likely climb as this tactic becomes more potent and accessible.
Devastating data breaches can result from just one bad login, making it essential to fight credential stuffing by using password managers, picking stronger authentication methods, and upgrading the speed and visibility of incident response.
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5. Business Email Compromise (BEC)
Considered a subset of social engineering, attacks known as business email compromise target the inbox with messages that appear to be from superiors, collaborators, and vendors asking for money, access, or data using convincing language mixed with legitimate information.
These attacks have proven so successful that they’ve stolen over $50 billion over the previous decade according to the FBI.
AI that makes it easier to harvest information, imitate speaking and writing styles, or create like-like avatars will significantly increase the threat (and losses) of BEC in coming years.
Employee cybersecurity training, especially around email security, lowers the risk of BEC, however this is a sophisticated threat orchestrated by determined hackers, making it hard to stop reliably.
Be prepared to detect, contain, and eradicate what can’t be prevented.
6. Supply Chain Attacks
In supply chain attacks, malicious actors gain access to a target by way of a third-party.
They will breach one company, then use the trusted relationships and integrated technology that company has with vendors, business partners, and customers to breach other companies, often without raising red flags or encountering many obstacles.
In one infamous example, hackers were able to breach the software maker SolarWinds and hide malicious code in a software update that later caused data breaches at major companies and government agencies.
By design, supply chain attacks are difficult to detect and deter, and they’re on the rise, costing companies $46 billion in 2023 and projected to cost $138 billion by 2031.
7. Insider Threats
Insider threats come from employees, contractors, of vendors working “inside” the organization, where they have access and permissions that can be abused, whether accidentally or intentionally.
Compromising people, in many cases, poses fewer challenges than compromising secured systems, making insiders a popular target for attackers.
Developments like the rise of the hybrid office and the emergence of AI increase the risk of insider threats, which increased at 74% of organizations in 2023. Another contributor is increasingly complex IT environments, which are harder for users to navigate securely.
To prevent insider threats, it takes a combination of training, policies, continuous monitoring, and incident response all working in sync.
8. Web Application Attacks
When attackers find vulnerabilities or implementation issues in web applications, they can attack those applications to steal sensitive information, gain unauthorized system access, or take critical applications offline.
Incidents like these have become more damaging as companies rely on larger numbers of web applications to enable remote work.
One vendor observed more than 18 billion attacks on web application just over the course of 2023.
Web application penetration testing can reduce the risk of these attacks by exposing vulnerabilities before they get exploited, provided those vulnerabilities get remediated in time.
9. IoT Attacks
Internet-connected devices (known as IoT devices) are ubiquitous in the digital world, and they are developed and deployed so quickly that many have inadequate or minimal cybersecurity built in.
Attacks on IoT devices went up by 100% between 2021 and 2024, both because they make for easy targets and because they can be lucrative launch pads for larger attacks on sensitive information and essential IT.
From eavesdropping on video conferences to taking control of a moving car, IoT attacks can have many alarming effects, especially as they proliferate.
Learn More: How To Prevent Wireless Network Attacks
Defenses against IoT attacks include password security, network segmentation, and regular patching, but there will always be gaps, making it important to complement prevention with detection and response.
10. Mobile Device Attacks
Mobile devices are also IoT devices, so it comes as no surprise that they share many of the same vulnerabilities for the same reasons. Mobile apps and devices have weak security while containing large amounts of sensitive information and security permissions, making them a natural target for cybersecurity attacks.
One analysis showed a 50% increase in mobile device attacks in 2023 alone, topping 33 million attacks overall.
Security teams, much like developers, still need to take threats to mobile devices more seriously, especially as things like malware and phishing attacks prioritize mobile targets.
Bring your own device (BYOD) policies, encryption, and patching play important roles in mobile security, along with an incident response plan for threats that breakthrough.
11. Denial-of-Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attacks
In both these types of attacks, servers are flooded with traffic until they go offline, taking critical apps, services, and data with them. Denial of services attacks send the traffic from one source while the distributed variety sends it from multiple sources.
The average DDoS attack cost $500,000 in 2023, a sharp increase caused by the duration of the average attack quadrupling in one year.
These attacks can make it impossible to conduct business, so every minute counts.
Some best practices to keep from getting overwhelmed by malicious traffic include rate limiting, network segmentation, and continuous monitoring — plus immediate response capabilities if an attack occurs.
12. Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs)
Often the most sophisticated threats in the wild, APTs infiltrate a company’s IT infrastructure, then establish a long-term presence, lurking undetected while they gather intelligence and lay the groundwork for larger attacks, often leading to security incidents with deep consequences.
An APT attack on Equifax resulted in the breach of 150 million people’s records and cost the company at least $425 million.
These attacks are often carried out by nation-state-sponsored cybercriminals with the best resources in the world and powerful motivations to succeed, underlining how malicious APTs can be.
Stopping them takes a cybersecurity strategy that combines offensive measures like penetration testing with defensive measures such as network monitoring and incident response.
13. Zero-Day Exploits
A zero day exploit is a vulnerability that is known by attackers but not by vendors, meaning there is no existing fix for the flaw and likely insufficient cybersecurity.
These exploits are especially dangerous because they don’t set off alarm bells when compromised, nor is there an easy way to prevent the problem.
Growth in the number of cybercriminals has meant the discovery of zero-day exploits in larger quantity and less time. An annual list of the 15 most exploited vulnerabilities contained a majority of zero-days for the first time in 2023.
Since these attacks are unknown by definition, stopping them takes the combined efforts of firewalls, antivirus, intrusion protection, and security policies.
Learn More: How To Build A Cybersecurity Program
14. Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) Attacks
As the name implies, man-in-the-middle attacks position themselves between two ends of a communication channel and steal or even alter data traveling in-between.
In one simple example, attackers make malicious Wi-Fi hotspots available in a public place, wait for someone to connect, then steal data throughout their session, including login credentials.
These attacks can lead to unauthorized access to almost anything, followed by any amount of damage and disruption, making them important to address with stronger access controls around sensitive information and improved monitoring—particularly as one report showed a 35% increase in MITM attacks after 2022.
Create A Security Incident Response Plan
Preventing phishing attacks and avoiding data breaches takes many different cybersecurity measures—but perhaps none more important than an incident response plan.
Planning and preparation are essential for being able to leap into action and work effectively whenever and wherever a security incident arises.
An incident response plan outlines the roles, responsibilities, policies, and procedures to follow during a security incident to eliminate errors, inefficiency, and uncertainty.
Every business needs to create a plan for security incidents, starting by picking a security framework to follow from NIST, SANS, or another authority. Save time by following a template that specifies what exactly to include in the incident response plan.
Then create an incident response policy that aligns with your security resources and business goals. Important as it may be to implement an incident response plan, even more important is keeping it updated as staff, technology, and threats all evolve.
Learn More: 7 Proven Security Incident Response Steps For Any Breach
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How Defiance XDR Detects, Responds, And Prevents Security Incidents
Small business have powerful protection against all types of security incidents with Defiance XDR™.
This managed extended detection and response (MXDR) services combines the strengths of multiple cybersecurity tools, automates vital parts of detection and response, and puts our experts in charge of getting everything right.
Defiance XDR™ provides enterprise-grade defenses—but eliminates the high cost, stress, and uncertainty of fighting security incidents in-house.
Security incidents are inevitable. Damage and disruption are not with Defiance XDR™ as the centerpiece of your small business cybersecurity strategy.
PurpleSec has the simple, affordable, and reliable solutions you seek.
Article by
Joshua is a diversely-skilled cybersecurity professional with over a decade of cybersecurity experience previously working for the Department of Defense.
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