Today, every line of data is worth money. Customer databases, quarterly plans, figures in reports—one mistake, and these files are already in someone else’s cloud.
At KISS Software, we protect fintech startups, online stores, and manufacturing companies, and we have long been convinced that simple antivirus software cannot solve all problems. True computer security is built around people, processes, and technology—at all levels. We will discuss this in more detail below with our expert Yevhen Kasyanenko.
Hackers try to break into other people’s networks almost every minute. By the end of 2024, businesses had lost $8.3 trillion due to cyber fraudsters. Almost half of the attacks were on small and medium-sized companies—criminals are confident that such firms do not have the money to defend themselves.
Computer security is no longer just about antivirus software. It’s about how not to lose money, customers, and reputation due to a single data leak. To avoid getting caught out, it is important to protect your network, monitor threats, and call in specialists in good time. Only a systematic approach provides real protection, rather than a false sense of security.
“Information security is not an additional expense. It is insurance for your brand against bankruptcy,” assures Yevhen Kasyanenko.
The world of digital attacks can be divided into four categories. Knowing them makes it easier to build defenses.
This includes Trojans, encryption viruses, and spyware. For example, in 2024, LokiLocker infected 2,000 European companies, demanding 2 bitcoins for data decryption.
We would like to describe three steps that reduce the risk of infection:
If you perform regular updates and supplement this with staff training, you will significantly reduce the likelihood of infection several times over.
Modern hackers are increasingly attacking people rather than systems. Phishing is when fraudsters pretend to be a bank, a service, or even your colleague to lure out passwords and access.
Even Tesla almost fell victim to this once: employees received an email from “management” asking them to change their passwords urgently. Everything looked convincing, but it was a trap. Fortunately, the protection worked in time.
What helps? Vigilance. Check the sender’s address, don’t click on suspicious links, and be sure to enable two-factor authentication. It’s simple and can save the entire system.
When thousands of fake requests flood the server at once, the site simply stops working. This is DDoS—one of the most common types of cyberattacks. It is used by blackmailers and competitors to paralyze businesses.
For example, in 2022, Google itself was hit: its servers were flooded with 46 million requests per second—the largest DDoS attack at the time. The attack lasted more than a month and was launched from thousands of IP addresses in hundreds of countries. It looked like a “technical glitch,” but in reality, it was an attempt to bring down services and paralyze the work of customers around the world. Fortunately, Google’s security system handled the incident.
So it is possible to defend against DDoS attacks – traffic filters and server solutions help by cutting off malicious requests before the site starts to “crash.”
Sometimes the main vulnerability is not in the system, but in people. Someone accidentally sent a file to the wrong place, someone took the customer database when they left the company, and someone else set their password to “12345.” It is precisely these little things that most often cause leaks. Therefore, it is important not only to set up protection, but also to teach the team basic cyber hygiene.
How to reduce risks:
“Teach your team cyber hygiene: if people understand that data is valuable, they behave differently,” advises Yevhen Kasyanenko.
Computer security is not about “installing antivirus software and forgetting about it.” It’s about how to protect your data from hacking, leaks, and accidental failures. There are more and more threats, and in order to avoid getting caught out, it’s important not just to tick a box on a checklist, but to understand where the weak points are and how to really close them.
The three pillars of cybersecurity are confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Without them, a system is like a house without a foundation: beautiful on the outside, but everything can collapse at the most unexpected moment.
If confidentiality, integrity, or availability fails somewhere, the first to suffer are the customers, the money, and the company’s reputation. Reliable protection is when all three pillars are maintained simultaneously.
An audit is necessary to identify weaknesses in advance and close them before hackers notice them. According to our expert, when conducting an audit, it is important to pay particular attention to several key risk areas.
Asset inventory:
Vulnerability search:
Penetration test:
Risk map and priority work plan:
“A full audit with threat modeling usually allows you to catch up to 80% of serious vulnerabilities in advance. And the best part is that most of them can be eliminated without major costs. It is enough to organize access rights, install updates regularly, and agree on clear security rules,” notes Yevhen Kasyanenko.
Don’t forget about:
Comprehensive protection, security audits, and modern technologies reduce the risk of cyberattacks and provide reliable data protection.
Cybersecurity mistakes are not just failures. They result in reputational damage, data leaks, business process interruptions, and real money leaking through holes in the system. To avoid this, more and more companies are choosing a professional approach, from outsourcing to constant monitoring.
If there are problems, they need to be solved. Here’s what to look for:
According to Gartner, companies with MSSPs reduce incident damage by 38%.
A penetration test is an agreed-upon attempt to hack into a company in the same way a real attacker would. The goal is not to cause harm, but to show where the defenses are failing. In practice, it looks like this:
For each vulnerability found, the risk, possible damage, and step-by-step attack path are indicated. Recommendations are ranked by criticality: what to close urgently, what can be planned.
“Such mechanisms should be carried out at least once a year and definitely after major changes – migration to the cloud, launch of a new feature, merger with another company. If a breach has occurred, it is worth making sure that the hole is closed and there are no side loopholes left. Regular testing helps to maintain the level of protection in practice,” assures Yevhen Kasyanenko.
The system compares logs with a database of attack templates in real time. If a match is found, the criticality level instantly increases – the average detection time is reduced from days to minutes.
SOC allows you to:
Connecting to a ready-made SOC-as-a-Service significantly saves money compared to setting up your own center: there is no need for capital expenditures on equipment, licenses, and a round-the-clock staff of analysts.
Even without a large budget, you can block most common threats. The main thing is discipline and consistency. Remember all the basics of computer security and apply the rules not just once, but constantly.
Create a long passphrase. It should contain 12-15 characters, mix words, numbers, punctuation marks, and do not duplicate it on other services. Add 2FA – a one-time code in the application or a hardware token. If an attacker guesses the password, the second factor will stop them.
Your operating system, browser, antivirus, and plugins should patch themselves. This reduces the window of vulnerability from weeks to hours—hackers simply don’t have time to take advantage of the new hacking opportunity.
Connect to a cloud-based isolated environment. Attachments are opened in an isolated environment, and links are checked against a reputation database. The user sees only sanitized content, and suspicious files are blocked until clicked.
No protection is 100% guaranteed. A failure, an encryption virus, or simply human error can leave you without important data. That’s why backing up is not just an option, but a mandatory rule:
One backup can save your entire business. No joke.
Employees should be given only the rights they need to do their job today. A new role means new rights. Periodic account audits remove the “hangers-on” of former employees and reduce the attack surface.
As Yevhen Kasyanenko notes, these five basic measures cut the risk of a massive attack by more than half and cost significantly less than dealing with the consequences of a breach.
Cyber threats evolve faster than any software release. According to European statistics, information leaks cost companies an average of €4.7 million, and indirect costs—downtime, lawyers, and reputational damage—add another third of that amount. This is critical for small businesses: six out of ten companies with fewer than 250 employees do not survive six months after a serious cyber incident.
“It is cheaper to build a secure architecture from scratch than to pay fines later. Our projects pay for themselves in an average of seven months by reducing downtime and costs,” emphasizes Yevhen Kasyanenko.
While some spend their nights recovering from hacks, others scale their sales, knowing that their protective perimeter is working. Choose the second strategy—contact us. The KISS Software team will build a system that not only repels attacks but also grows with your business.
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