Empowering Small Businesses with Big IT Solutions
Are you a target? If you say no, you are!!
Every week a new cybersecurity story is posted online or trending in our social media feeds.
These user stories are identical to so many that are true throughout the world. One story in particular involved someone with access to their organization’s finances. This person received a message from “an executive” with instructions how to urgently wire them money. Another popular message finding its way into mailboxes, appears to come from the readers own address. The message says something like “I’ve hacked your computer” and the only way to prevent embarrassing information being leaked to your co-workers is paying an extortion fee.
These are just a couple examples phishing e-mails and now with the whole world focused on the spread of the coronavirus, cyberthieves are jumping at the opportunity to take advantage of our collective concern. Phishing emails and scams related to the coronavirus are increasing rapidly.
Here are some tips that we hope help you stay safe in the cyber world:
- Train your company on how to spot malicious e-mails
- Have suspicious e-mail reporting policies and procedures in place
- Be extra suspicious of any message that urges immediate action
- Inspect the email address and URLs in all correspondence. Scammers often mimic a legitimate site or email address by using a slight variation in spelling
- Install an e-mail security and protection application
- Use services that have Advanced Threat Protection
- Keep software systems up to date and use a good anti-virus program.
- Do not open any attachments unless you are expecting it
- Ask yourself, why am I getting this e-mail?
- If an unsolicited text message, email, or phone call asks you to update, check, or verify your account information, do not follow the link provided in the message itself or call the phone numbers provided in the message
- Scrutinize all electronic requests for a payment or transfer of funds
- Be extra suspicious of any message that urges immediate action.
- Confirm requests for wire transfers or payment in person or over the phone as part of a two-factor authentication process
- Make sure you are able to monitor all nodes on your network
- Backup your firewall, router and switch configurations and have active notifications when they change
We would be glad to help you figure out what is right for you.
Security Awareness, Antivirus, Phishing Emails, Patch Management