Trust is the foundation of a good relationship – you trust friends to be loyal, sincere, and honest. But when you blindly trust online friends, you could be opening yourself up to cyberattack. When you hear about a big data breach on the news, you may think you don’t need to worry. You may think, “I don’t do business with that company, so the crooks can’t steal my identity.” Or [...]
The executives of your company are the big fish in your sea. Yet cybercriminals think of them as whales. In fact, whaling is a new cybersecurity threat targeting the C-suite level. You’ve likely heard of phishing attacks. Phishers use scam emails or spoofed websites to obtain user credentials or financial information. This might be an email that looks like it is from your bank asking you to log in and [...]
Phishing attacks have been around for a long time in IT. Designed to steal your credentials or trick you into installing malicious software, they have persisted in the IT world precisely because they have been so devastatingly simple and effective. A more modern and more effective version of the same attack called "Spear-Phishing" is commonly used today. A typical phishing attack involves an attacker sending out a malicious email to [...]
A single click can be the difference between maintaining data security and suffering massive financial losses. From the moment just one employee takes the bait in a phishing email, your business is vulnerable to data breaches and extensive downtime. Quickly spot the red flags and put phishing emails where they belong: 1. Poor spelling and grammar While occasional typos happen to even the best of us, an email filled with [...]
Passwords are essential to your cybersafety. You know it, but if you’re like the rest of the digital society, you probably have dozens of passwords to remember. It’s a lot. So, you might take shortcuts. Taking advantage of your laissez-faire attitude is one way bad guys access your passwords. Incredibly, there are still people out there using “password” or “123456” in their access credentials. Some people don’t change the default [...]
Locking Up Cybersecurity with a Managed Services Provider Cybercrime is not the most costly of illegal activities. That dubious distinction goes to government corruption, followed by drug trafficking. Cybercrime comes in third. Yet cybercrime does take the top spot when it comes to numbers of victims. A managed services provider can help. Cybercrime has hundreds of millions of victims. Two-thirds of people online have experienced personal information theft or compromise. [...]
More and more businesses and organizations are getting stung by ransomware demands. Hospitals, schools, social networks…some days it seems like an epidemic that leaps around arbitrarily, and hackers are raking in millions. Tallied across the word…billions. Ransomware attacks are devious in their simplicity. A user in the target business is tricked into opening a file, usually through a phishing email or download. The file contains malware which instantly encrypts your [...]
Getting hit with a ransomware attack is never fun, your files get encrypted by cybercriminals and you’re left having to decide: should we pay to get them back? It’s a scene that’s played out across the world with 70% of businesses saying ‘yes’ in 2016 alone. Here’s what you should consider if you’re ever in this situation. Do you trust them? Besides the fact that they’re criminals holding your data [...]
Ransomware has undeniably been the biggest security threat of 2016. No-one was safe. Hackers targeted everyone and everything, including home PCs – and they were astoundingly successful – earning themselves upwards of $846 million from US reported incidents alone. Business is booming for hackers, with thousands of attacks each day bringing in an average of $640 per target. Perhaps even more alarmingly, the financial cost of each individual attack is [...]
Ransomware has become an undeniable threat to business growth, profitability and security. It’s a ruthless type of malware that locks your keyboard or computer to prevent you from accessing your data until you pay the ransom, which is usually demanded in untraceable Bitcoin. Cyber criminals are turning this type of attack into big business, raking in billions each year as many businesses have no choice but to pay up. How [...]