Cybersecurity isn’t just a buzzword—unfortunately, it’s here to stay. As a business owner, operator or manager, you will likely continue to hear about bad actors who prey on businesses in hopes of breaking through and stealing data for a ransom payment. Let’s explore the most common ways hackers get in and what potential impacts they can have on you.
Estimated read time: 2 minutes

A Worldwide Problem
Regardless of the way hackers find their way into your network, it will most definitely cost you an abundance of time. These events mean money out of your pocket along with potential harm to your company’s reputation. Dealing with a cyberattack often involves meetings with law enforcement and attorneys as well as insurance companies. However, there are some underlying common ways that hackers attack or infiltrate your network. In conjunction with leaders from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, representatives from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), have identified some common tactics that hackers use to consistently exploit businesses and organizations throughout the world.
One of the top vulnerabilities that this group, collectively called the Cybersecurity Advisory, has recognized is what is called “Code Injection.” Code Injection happens when unauthorized users push computer programming code into a program to change the way it is designed to run. This “bad code” can cause system disruptions and potentially even data breaches. This is why it is of utmost importance to have cybersecurity and network protection measures in place to help prevent these risks. Managed IT and cyber experts have the systems and tools needed to help mitigate this source of trouble behind the scenes via regular software patching to make this a reduced risk for your business.
Eyes on the Network ‘Buffer’
Another common hack, according to the Cybersecurity Advisory, is known as “Buffer Overflow.” A buffer in the realm of network technology is a temporary storage space that holds data as it moves between devices to avoid network congestion. When that buffer exceeds its storage capacity, the extra data rolls over into different memory locations.
This overflow can lead to instability which can then make your network more susceptible to cyberattacks. Hamilton’s cyber solutions include monitoring tools to detect and prevent this type of attack without a noticeable impact on your network or its front-end users.
Privilege Escalation Vulnerabilities
“Privilege Escalation” is the last vulnerability type we will cover in this blog. There are two main types of Privilege Escalation: horizontal and vertical. Horizontal privilege escalation is when an attacker steals an employee’s credentials to gain access to your network. Once these bad actors get into your network, they attempt to acquire more permissions or higher-level access, and at that point, the vulnerability is referred to as vertical privilege escalation. There are ways to help prevent this type of vulnerability through the implementation of Privileged Access Management (PAM). You can read more on PAM here.
Prevent and Mitigate Cyber Threats
Now that we have described a few of the most common vulnerabilities, it’s important to know how to prevent and mitigate them. Working with a third-party provider like Hamilton to manage your IT services can most certainly help prevent code injection and buffer overflow from affecting your organization. Through offerings that include patch management, server and network management, as well as software updates and technical support, a reliable vendor will work continuously in the background to keep your data secure.
Reputable managed service providers review reports regularly, which gives them and your organization the ability to see the number of attempts made to compromise your network in a given period as well as any actions taken for prevention. The benefit of working with Hamilton is the access you have to monitor network behavior and traffic through reports anytime, anywhere.
In addition to Managed IT as a solution, adding a cybersecurity package to your suite of services increases security behind the scenes to ward off not only the issues mentioned above but many other vulnerabilities. Cybersecurity products are part of a suite of offerings that go beyond patch management to include vulnerability scans, penetration testing, employee training and more.
Now that you know what types of attacks are most common, let Hamilton help keep your business safe. We invite you to contact us or call 308.381.1000 today.
For more information on the impacts of cyberattacks on small businesses, read our blog “Small Businesses, Big Cybersecurity Targets.”
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