Online safety is not taken seriously enough in the modern world. Every day, around 560 000 computers are infected by one of billions of malware programs. With so many people falling prey to these cyber-attacks, how can we fight this malware and protect our digital life?

Educating ourselves on malware helps us spot typical attack paths and avoid interacting with attackers in the first place. There are many types of malware which pose a threat to electronic devices. 

The five most common types of malware are viruses, ransomware, phishing attacks, trojans, and spyware. Viruses are the most common form, spreading through self-replication onto the afflicted system. Once installed, they infect other devices on the same network without human interaction. Viruses often need user interaction to deploy successfully but run wild very quickly after deployment.

Ransomware, as the name implies, is used to hold information hostage, allowing cybercriminals to demand ransom from besieged users. This is commonly done by encrypting all the victim’s data and putting it behind a paywall. Companies all over the world suffer from ransomware attacks daily and are forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their information back. 

Phishing uses deception in the form of a normal link or message link, requesting you to sign into an account such as Amazon or Google, recreating the sign-in page that would normally be on the original website. This allows the deployment of malicious software onto the user’s computer.

Trojans, just like phishing, disguise themselves as trustworthy applications, such as an antivirus program, to trick users into downloading it. It is usually a downloaded form of malware taken off the internet or installed by other malicious programs.

Spyware is a type of malware that spies on a user’s computer activity. This includes keystrokes, capturing screenshots, web browsing activity, and record audio and/or video. Spyware is installed on the victim’s computer without their knowledge. It can steal sensitive information, such as user passwords, credit card numbers and other data.

As cybercriminals continue to find loopholes and vulnerabilities in all systems, including iOS, Android, and Windows, we must remain vigilant to threats.

You can prevent the infection of your own devices by keeping your systems up-to-date and educating yourself on the different ways which cybercriminals infiltrate devices.  The systems we use are constantly being updated to fix bugs which certain viruses exploit.  By keeping our systems current, we can keep ahead of most malware.

As technology continues to become embedded into our daily lives, its ever more important that we stay updated on how to combat threats to our digital lives.