No one can deny the fact the cyber-attacks will become more dangerous as time progresses. Businesses will continue to be a target for cybercriminals as they hold a lot of sensitive data and finances that attracts hackers towards them. The focus will slowly shift towards large enterprises and critical infrastructure, but that does not mean that small businesses are safe, as shown by the latest IT security trends.

The increasing costs of recovering from a cyberattack combined with the damage to the business reputation can negatively impact your business continuity. Large enterprises can recover from such a shock because they have the finances, but small and medium-sized businesses cannot afford such attacks. To protect your business from these cybersecurity attacks, it is important to invest in the right tools.

In this article, you will learn about five types of cybersecurity tools your business should invest in today.

5 Types of Cybersecurity Tools

Here are five common types of cybersecurity tools that businesses should invest in.

1. Data and Application Protection
2. Fraud Detection
3. Anti-Phishing
4. Log Analysis
5. Penetration Testing

1. Data and Application Protection

As mentioned before, hackers have diverted their attention towards infrastructure; therefore, it is important for businesses to protect their critical infrastructure. Invest in data and application protection tools that can prevent unauthorized traffic from trespassing your network and getting access to critical applications and databases. You can use a web application firewall and data protection services for this purpose. With most businesses now taking the hybrid approach where some of their data is stored on cheap dedicated servers while the rest is stored in the cloud. This means that you need a data protection solution that can be deployed on both fronts.

2. Fraud Detection

Cybersecurity attacks come in all shapes and sizes. Some might try to sneak into your network and steal your data while others might try to trick your employees and customers into sharing their personal information with them. This is why it is important to keep an eye on online fraud, especially if you have an online business. By investing in fraud detection, you can minimize the risk of online fraud by creating risk profiles of customers and asking customers with a higher risk profile to verify their purchases.

Tools like Riskified are a great example. It uses machine learning and analyzes every financial transaction and prevents illegitimate orders from processing. It’s smart and dynamic checkout features adjust according to the risk profile of customers. This means that customers with a higher risk profile will have to go through a lengthy process for verifying their purchases. Educate your employees and customers about online fraud so they don’t fall victim to these fraudsters.

3. Anti-Phishing

Your employees are the weakest link and a small mistake on their part can put your entire business at stake. Hackers know that and launch social engineering attacks to steal login credentials and get access to your accounts.

Thankfully there are many tools that you can use to save yourself from such an attack. These anti-phishing tools not only identify phishing messages but also tell you the indicators so you can do it yourself as well.

Some tools even let you launch simulated phishing attacks that look like real phishing attacks. This goes a long way in helping you gauge how good your employees are at identifying phishing messages. Here is how you can protect your business from spear phishing attacks.

4. Log Analysis

Most businesses create a log of all the activities performed on their computer systems. This allows them to analyze different patterns and trends, which makes it easy for them to identify security breaches and malware infections.

The problem lies in analyzing all the information stored in log files. These log files are in text format, making it almost impossible for you to analyze them manually.

Thankfully, there are log analysis tools that can help you with that. These log analysis tools can collect log files from multiple sources such as servers, applications and even endpoints and parses through all the information.

After analyzing the information stored in log files, these tools deliver actionable insights by generating a comprehensive report. This allows you to act quickly and report an alarming pattern to administrators to minimize the damage.

5. Penetration Testing

Buying the latest and greatest security software won’t help your cause if it is not integrated with your infrastructure completely. Even if you manage to integrate it successfully, it is important to check whether it is working as expected or not.

Instead of waiting for a cyber attack to happen, you should conduct periodic penetration testing to measure the strength of your cybersecurity system. Beefing up security with frequent testing will help you identify the loopholes in your cybersecurity infrastructure, which hackers can exploit. Fill in those gaps before cybercriminals can take advantage of those vulnerabilities.

Which type of cybersecurity tools your business use? Feel free to share it with us in the comments section below.