Attacks can have a major impact on the running of tournaments, the reputation of organisers and the overall perception of esports as a serious industry. [Start reading from HERE]
It is an important topic, especially at a time when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has voted to make esports officially part of the Olympic Games and have its own Olympics from 2025.
The video games industry has long since outgrown the film industry. Statista estimates that the video game industry will even reach $455 billion in revenue by 2024.
We register billions of players, thousands of esports teams, multimillion-dollar tournament prizes. And where there’s money, there are cybercriminals.
In this post, Check Point Software Technologies reveals 7 tips for protecting gaming companies and esports teams from hackers:
- Focus on prevention, not just threat detection, and implement advanced preventative security technologies. Pay special attention to protecting against ransomware and DDoS attacks.
- Educate employees and players regularly on current threats and risks and the need to use two-factor authentication for all accounts. Many cyberattacks start with a targeted email that does not contain malware but uses social engineering to entice the user to click on a dangerous link. User education is therefore one of the most important parts of protection.
- Be especially vigilant on weekends and holidays, as many attacks take place at times when organisations are more likely to be slower to respond to a threat.
- Secure everything, as cybercriminals will exploit any weakness.
- Install updates and patches regularly and never delay them.
- If you want to minimise the impact of any successful attack, then it’s important to ensure that users only have access to the information and resources they absolutely need. Network segmentation minimises the risk of the threat spreading uncontrollably throughout the organisation. Dealing with the aftermath of an attack on a single system can be difficult, but repairing the damage after an attack on the entire network is much more challenging.
- Backing up and archiving data is essential. If something goes wrong, your data should be easily and quickly recoverable. Therefore, it’s imperative to consistently back up, including automatically on employee devices, and not rely on them to remember to turn on the backup themselves. Attackers will then lose the leverage they need if your data is encrypted.
[Featured Image Credit]
