Zero-Day Exploit and How It Can Destroy Your Business

Zero-day attacks are one of the biggest worries for any company where a major portion of business relies on software and IT services.

As a business owner, executive, or admin, it is important to realize the intensity of zero-day attacks. You need to understand the basics of these attacks, how they function, and why it is important to have your business protected against them.

This guide will help you with the same. We will tell you all about Zero-Day attacks, along with pointers on how to protect your systems against the same.

What is a Zero-Day Exploit?

In simple terms, Zero-day attacks are attacks on recently explored vulnerabilities in software that the developers haven’t fixed yet.

Zero-day attacks occur between the time point of when the vulnerability is discovered, to when it is fixed by developers in a patch or an update. The time period between these two points is known as the vulnerability window.

Zero-day exploits are named so because the developers have exactly zero days to fix the exploit. If it is not fixed urgently, the attackers can take advantage of them.

The vulnerability that causes the Zero-day attack is called Zero-day vulnerability (or Zero-day exploit).

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How Do Zero-Day Attacks Work?

Software developers and internal security teams of companies are constantly testing the products to explore vulnerabilities and bugs. This often results in exploring new vulnerabilities, and sometimes new vulnerabilities get reported by software users.

However, these vulnerabilities are not fixed right away. Developers create patches and make fixes in scheduled updates, which can happen some days after exploits are discovered.

During this window, potential attackers sometimes find out about the exploits and use it to compromise the target systems.

How to Protect Against Zero-Day Attacks?

Zero-day attacks can occur on your business or organization through any of the software you are using across the network. It could be your CRM, your billing application, your accounting software, or even the applications used by your IT provider.

Unless you have an internal cybersecurity department, it can feel almost impossible to protect against zero-day attacks at all times. Don’t worry, there is still a solution you can employ without hiring any cybersecurity team itself.

Tekkis Against Zero-Day Attacks

Tekkis is a cybersecurity consultancy based in the US that can assess your current IT security framework and optimize it for complete protection against zero-day attacks.

Unlike many other cybersecurity agencies that use off-the-shelf products to guard you, Tekkis uses products and solutions that are tailored to your specific business and uses.

No method is permanently secure against cyberattacks, since cyberattacks evolve continuously. Therefore, the methods used by Tekkis to secure your systems are updated and upgraded continuously as well.

This means that your system is protected 24x7, without you having to worry about it even for a second.

The best part is that you don’t have to make any commitments before getting a preview of what Tekkis is all about. Try a free demo and find out how it is the best protection against zero-day attacks.

How to Identify Zero-Day Attacks?

There can be different ways in which zero-day vulnerabilities can be exploited by hackers. The exploit could be as simple as some problems with the password security, or something you didn’t expect like a missing data encryption layer.

Either way, there are so many ways in which the zero-day vulnerabilities can shape up that the possibilities of the attack are endless.

Here are a few ways to identify a zero-day attack:

Malware Database:

One of the most common ways to identify zero-day attacks is to use current malware and virus databases. These databases have the working pattern behavior of common malware. Therefore, they can detect if a known zero-day vulnerability has entered your systems.

However, by definition, zero-day exploits are exploits that are currently unknown. Therefore, the malware designed for these exploits is often not found in the common databases. This means that even if you are using a vast malware database, it still might not be enough.

Monitoring Target System:

Another alternative is to monitor the behavior of the target systems to find any anomalies. In this method, the various processes occurring inside the target systems are monitored to find out if anything fishy is going on.

Hybrid Machine Learning Model:

This is the technique utilized by security experts such as Tekkis. It is a combined system that utilizes both of the above methods as well. In Hybrid Machine Learning Model, a database of past zero-day exploits is used as a reference point.

Systems are set up to monitor the target system behavior. When behavior activities occur that resemble the behavior of zero-day exploits in the database, it triggers the zero-day attack buzzer.

This system often utilizes intelligent predictive models that can analyze and find out zero-day attacks. This predictive model can catch attacks even if their behavior is similar but not exactly the same to the past exploits.

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Endnotes

Zero-day exploits have become a nightmare not just for software vendors, but also for all the businesses that utilize this software.

Large companies don’t worry about these exploits because they have an internal cybersecurity team checking their systems 24x7.

However, if you are a small business, we understand that you cannot waste your resources on that luxury right now. This is why hiring third-party cybersecurity consultants such as Tekkis is the best option for you.

With services like Tekkis, you get to enjoy all the benefits of an exclusive cybersecurity team, without actually paying for the infrastructure or the related costs of maintaining a team yourself.

Get in touch with an Tekkis representative today and get a free quote for your own business.