HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU'VE BEEN HACKED?

Don't let attackers sneak under your radar: Nik Rawlinson reveals the telltale signs to look out for

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CYBERATTACKS don’t look like you might expect—and they certainly don’t look like they do in the movies. If your security is compromised, you probably won’t see a big flashing sign saying ‘YOU HAVE BEEN HACKED’, or weird skull-and-crossbones graphics filling your display.

On the contrary, modern attackers lay low. The era when hackers just wanted to attract attention and cause chaos has long gone —today, they more likely want to use your computer for mining cryptocurrency, or as a staging point for launching anonymous attacks on remote targets. Or, of course, they may intend to quietly encrypt your personal files, with a view to demanding a ransom for the decryption key. Whatever the goal, it’s in their interest to be as discreet as possible, and not to tip you off that you’ve been compromised, at least until their dirty work is done.

Those scenarios apply equally in business environments, along with the additional concern of digital espionage. For a company, the first indication of an intrusion might look like nothing more than a strange coincidence—a rival beating you to market with a product that looks a lot like your own, perhaps, or pursuing contacts and deals in a way that stymies your commercial strategy. It could be sheer bad luck, or it could be that someone has been spying on your confidential plans.