Today, brute force hacking attacks are the most popular way that cybercriminals are spreading ransomware.
What is a brute force attack? This is essentially where a fraudster tries to guess your password repeatedly, usually with the help of a bot. These bots help with both intelligent guesses and sheer volume of tries.
If you want to keep your accounts safe, then here are 5 tips that will help thwart these password attacks.
1. Limit the Number of Login Attempts
As we’ve mentioned above, brute force attacks consist of a deluge of login attempts. Usually, these cybercriminals don’t stop until they’re successful.
You can stop these criminals in their tracks by limiting the number of login attempts they can make in a certain period of time. For example, you can limit it to 5 tries per hour.
This can heavily slow down their attacks and give you time to detect and block them.
2. Use Whitelisting
Most websites are accessible by the general public, and this includes fraudsters. But you can eliminate this type of wide access by using whitelisting.
Whitelisting is where you only let authorized users onto your site. You can gatekeep who gets access to certain pages. If their IPs are whitelisted, then they’ll be allowed on those webpages.
3. Use Geoblocking
If your employees and clients are all located in certain parts of the world, then it may help to use geoblocking. This is where your website blocks IP addresses based on where they’re physically tied to.
For instance, brute force hackers are highly concentrated in certain countries. If you don’t do business in those countries, it’s best that you just geoblock them. This can dramatically reduce the pool of cybercriminals who can even attempt brute force hacking on your website.
4. Don’t Use the Default Port
Brute force hacking is usually carried out on the default port of 22. To make it harder for fraudsters to carry out attacks, you should switch to a non-standard port. You can do this by editing the port line in your sshd_config file.
5. Use Multifactor Authentication (MFA)
You probably already have two-step authentication (2FA) on your devices. While that’s better than nothing, it’s still not as good as multifactor authentication (MFA).
This is because it requires more than just two steps for someone to gain access to your account. The more layers to your security, the better. If cybercriminals are able to crack one step, they’ll only hit a wall once they move onto another.
Prevent Brute Force Hacking Attacks
Now that you have these helpful tips on brute force hacking, make sure you take the proper steps to upgrade your cybersecurity. By using a good solution like Acceptto’s Continuous Behavioral AuthenticationTM eGuardian® platform, you’ll be able to protect both your employees and customers.
Are you ready to implement MFA in your workplace? Then request a demo from us now. You can say goodbye to passwords with our platform.
