Have you heard of blended cyber attacks? Also known as blended threats, they involve the use of multiple forms of malware — or multiple forms of other cyber attacks — to cause harm.
During a typical cyber attack, you can expect a single instance of malware. Of course, all it takes is one piece of malware to cause harm. Malware can delete data, modify data, steal data, consume resources and more. Blended cyber attacks simply combine multiple forms of malware to amplify their effects. This post explores the dangers of blended cyber attacks and how they can affect you.
Antivirus Software May Not Stop Them
You shouldn’t rely strictly on antivirus software to stop blended cyber attacks. It may prevent some forms of malware from reaching your computer, but antivirus software may fail to stop other forms of malware. All blended cyber attacks involve multiple threats. Some of them may involve over a half-dozen forms of malware. As a result, antivirus software isn’t a foolproof solution to prevent blended cyber attacks.
Fast-Spreading
Blended cyber attacks can spread very quickly. Most of them involve malware. As you may know, malware can spread. Viruses are able to spread by duplicating themselves. They receive their namesake from biological viruses, which can spread as well. Worms have similar characteristics. If you’re the victim of a blended cyber attack, your computer may become infected with these or other forms of fast-spreading malware. The end result is more damage to more of your computers and devices.
Network Outages
Some blended cyber attacks can take your entire network offline. In addition to spreading malware, they may involve distributes denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Malware and DDoS aren’t the same. Nonetheless, they are often used in blended cyber attacks. If a blended cyber attack includes DDoS, it may overload your network with huge amounts of traffic. All of this traffic will essentially overload your network, resulting in an outage. Network outages are just one more concern with blended cyber attacks.
Difficult to Recover From
It’s difficult to recover from blended cyber attacks. Rather than just one form of malware, you’ll have to remove multiple forms of malware. And as previously mentioned, antivirus software may not catch them all. You can still recover from blended cyber attacks, but it’s not particularly easy. You’ll have to identify and remove all of the malware. Even then, some of your data may be deleted, in which case you’ll have to restore it.
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