Cyberattacks are attempts by criminals or malicious individuals to illegitimately access an organization’s IT computer network to steal data, intellectual property, or money; to disrupt business operations and supply chains; or to damage the company in other ways. Cyberattacks may target an IT network, applications, web applications, APIs, mobile devices, individual servers, endpoint devices, providers, and/or users.
How modern cyberattacks have evolved
The nature of cyberattacks is constantly evolving. As businesses move more applications and IT assets onto internet-facing networks, attackers have shifted their strategies and developed attacks that no longer rely purely on brute force to breach a system or take critical infrastructure offline. Cyberattacks today often probe for and take advantage of application vulnerabilities, including misconfigurations and zero-day vulnerabilities in an operating system, web app, or API. They may use phishing emails and social engineering campaigns to scam and lure employees into revealing login credentials, sharing sensitive data, enabling unauthorized access, or transferring funds to fraudulent accounts for their financial gain.
And increasingly, attackers are combining techniques such as malware attacks, SQL injection attacks, and man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks to launch ever more sophisticated — and successful — campaigns. Some threat actors plant a hidden backdoor inside a system to maintain persistent access. Others purchase stolen data on the dark web, including exposed credentials used for account takeover and identity theft.
Cyberattacks are carried out by a wide range of adversaries — from individual cybercriminals seeking cryptocurrency payments to organized crime groups, state-sponsored actors, and even nation-states targeting government agencies, critical infrastructure, and private enterprises.
As a result, savvy organizations are seeking a cybersecurity partner with comprehensive solutions that can ensure a unified defense against an ever-changing universe of threats. That’s why more companies are turning to security solutions from Akamai.
Common types of cyberattacks
The many types of cyberattacks today represent increasingly diverse attack vectors, making cybercrime more difficult to defend against, – even with strong network security, firewalls, antivirus software, and collaboration with law enforcement and service providers.
DDoS attacks, or distributed denial-of-service attacks, are malicious campaigns designed to shut down a website or make network resources unavailable to legitimate traffic and users. Attackers accomplish this by flooding sites or servers with so much malicious traffic that they crash or are unable to operate.
Ransomware attacks block access to a company’s files by encrypting everything on a device or server. For this type of malware, the aAttackers demand a ransom in exchange for the decryption key that will reestablish access to critical assets.
Malware is malicious software that, once downloaded to devices or computer systems, can propagate malicious code (such as spyware, as an example), and spread through a network on its own to serve a variety of malicious purposes.
Web application attacks include techniques such as cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection that exploit application vulnerabilities, including misconfigurations, coding flaws, or previously unknown zero-day vulnerabilities.
API attacks exploit vulnerabilities in application programming interfaces (APIs), often involving authentication or authorization flaws (such as broken object level authorization), excessive data exposure, or insecure communications that allow attackers to access or manipulate sensitive data.
DNS attacks target the Domain Name System (DNS) to disrupt availability, manipulate DNS responses, or intercept traffic. Examples include DNS amplification DDoS attacks, DNS spoofing, and cache poisoning.
Account takeover is a cyberattack where hackers take ownership of online accounts using stolen credentials.
Botnets are networks of compromised devices that attackers control remotely. These networks are often used to launch cyberattacks such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, spam campaigns, or credential-stuffing attacks.
Phishing attacks and spear-phishing campaigns use deception and social engineering to trick victims into disclosing information that an attacker can use to steal personal data, money, and credentials.These attacks frequently arrive as phishing emails, fake login pages, or deceptive messages distributed through social media platforms.
Advanced persistent threats (APTs) are stealthy cyberattacks that allow malicious actors to gain access to networks and remain active for extended periods of time, gathering and extracting valuable data.
Prevent cyberattacks with Akamai
Akamai Cloud offers comprehensive security solutions that protect your entire ecosystem: clouds, apps, APIs, and users. Providing defenses against a wide range of multi-vector cyberattacks, Akamai offers unified technology that delivers in-depth defense against cyberthreats, along with streamlined controls and automated solutions that minimize the workload of IT teams.
Achieve intelligent, end-to-end protection for apps and APIs
Akamai API and application security solutions provide adaptive protections that effortlessly push the latest defenses for apps and APIs. Advanced API discovery helps to manage risk from new and previously unknown APIs while monitoring for malicious payloads. Akamai also offers solutions that defend sites from client-side threats and ensure 100% DNS availability.
Enforce Zero Trust access to apps and the internet from anywhere
Akamai’s phish-proof multifactor authentication (MFA) solution software-based segmentation prevents employee account takeovers and data breaches. Strong passwords alone are no longer enough to prevent compromise. Zero Trust Network Access ensures that the right users have precise access to the right apps, rather than to the entire network – reducing the overall attack surface.
Akamai’s secure web gateway safely connects users and devices to the internet, whether they are on corporate networks, home Wi-Fi, or using a VPN. Akamai’s protection for client-side threats spots and blocks malicious activity with real-time visibility into threats and vulnerabilities within all your scripts.
Visualize and segment assets faster
Akamai’s software-based segmentation technology simplifies the process of protecting critical assets wherever they are deployed — in the cloud, virtual servers, on-premises, bare metal, or containers. A flexible allowlist/denylist model facilitates fast risk reduction with few rules. And the ability to consistently enforce policies on a segmented network means the same level of granular, process-level rules can be applied across different operating environments such as Windows and Linux.
Stop the biggest, bandwidth-busting DDoS attacks
Akamai delivers comprehensive protection against the broadest range of DDoS attack types. Purpose-built to stop attacks in the cloud before they reach applications, data centers, and other internet-facing infrastructure — Akamai’s DDoS protection relies on 20+ global high-capacity scrubbing centers. The Akamai Security Operations Command Center (SOCC) uses advanced threat detection and automation to deploys proactive and/or custom mitigation controls to stop attacks instantly.
Stop credential stuffing, bots, and human web fraud
Akamai security solutions spot suspicious human and bot behavior in real time to prevent account takeover and thwart cyberattacks driven by human extortion and fraud. Our bot mitigation solutions let the good bots in, while defending against dangerous, costly bot attacks. Our customer identity and access management solution provides fast-to-deploy single sign-on (SSO), registration, and authentication.
Benefits of Akamai security solutions
Stronger security
Akamai edge security solutions stop attacks in the cloud, at the network edge, closer to attackers and before they can impact applications and infrastructure.
Greater scale
With Akamai’s unmatched scale and global distribution, you can stop the largest direct attacks and protect your organization from collateral damage during cyberwarfare against other companies.
Real-time support
We provide a single point of contact for attack support and real-time incident response. After an attack, our solutions allow you to go beyond high-level dashboards to gain granular visibility for root-cause analysis and post-attack forensics.
Improved visibility
Manage multiple solutions through our web-based portal for greater visibility into attacks and policy control. Integrate your existing security information and event management (SIEM) tool for greater control over all security solutions.
Integrated solutions
Akamai security solutions are designed to work together to improve mitigation and simplify management.
Simpler management
Akamai Managed Security Service lets your security teams offload the task of deploying physical appliances and software solutions to our team of experts. Adaptive threat protections help to address changing threat conditions.
Reduce future risk
Akamai enables you to build a security infrastructure that will respond to cybersecurity threats today as well as tomorrow. Akamai Cloud allows you to seamlessly deploy new security capabilities and solutions as they become available, without disrupting applications and infrastructure.
Frequently Asked Questions
The effects of a cyberattack can include data breaches, identity theft, financial losses, operational downtime, regulatory penalties, and reputational damage. Some attacks encrypt data for ransom, while others steal login credentials, intellectual property, or customer information. In large-scale incidents, cyberattacks can disrupt supply chains, government agencies, and critical infrastructure.
The most common type of cyberattack is phishing, which is a type of social engineering attack that attempts to trick victims into providing personal or financial information. Phishing attacks are often disguised as legitimate emails, links, or websites, and they can be used to steal passwords, credit card details, or other sensitive data.
Malware is malicious software designed to infiltrate, damage, or disrupt computers, networks, or applications. Types of malware include viruses, worms, ransomware, spyware, trojans, and botnet agents. Malware may steal data, encrypt files, access sensitive information, create backdoors for attackers, or enable further cyberattacks.
Organizations can prevent cyberattacks by implementing layered cybersecurity defenses, including firewalls, antivirus software, multi-factor authentication (MFA), zero trust network access, strong passwords, endpoint protection, and threat detection systems. Regular patching of operating systems and applications, employee security training, and real-time threat intelligence also reduce risk.
A cyberattack is an active attempt to exploit systems or data, while a cybersecurity threat refers to the potential risk of harm from vulnerabilities, malicious actors, or emerging attack methods.
Why customers choose Akamai
Akamai is the cybersecurity and cloud computing company that powers and protects business online. Our market-leading security solutions, superior threat intelligence, and global operations team provide defense in depth to safeguard enterprise data and applications everywhere. Akamai’s full-stack cloud computing solutions deliver performance and affordability on the world’s most distributed platform. Global enterprises trust Akamai to provide the industry-leading reliability, scale, and expertise they need to grow their business with confidence.
