The bad news: It's you against an army of cyber criminals around the world. The good news: A little knowledge can provide an effective defense
1. Two starting points lead to the vast majority of attacks
Unpatched software provides the main entry point of entry for hackers or
malware, in part because very few computers have the latest updates for
every commonly hacked program. The victim surfs to a web page or opens
an email, and their computer is instantly, silently compromised. The
second-most-common attack method: The user gets tricked into installing a
Trojan. Together, these two methods account for almost all successful
hacks.
Sure, there are hundreds of other methods: SQL injection attacks,
password guessing, and so on. But nearly everything besides unpatched
software and downloaded Trojans is statistical noise. In fact, if you
fix the main two issues, you almost don’t need to do anything else.
