Imagine starting your day with a cup of coffee, ready to tackle your to-do list, when an email that appears to be from a trusted partner lands in your inbox. It looks legitimate, but hidden within is a phishing trap set by cybercriminals.
This scenario is becoming all too common for businesses, both big and small.
Phishing scams are evolving and becoming more sophisticated with every passing day. As a decision-maker, it’s crucial to understand these threats and debunk common myths to protect your business effectively.
The Most Popular Phishing Myth
Many people believe phishing scams are easy to identify, thinking they can spot them due to poor grammar, suspicious links or blatant requests for personal information.
However, this is far from the truth. Modern phishing attacks have become highly complicated, making them difficult to detect. Cybercriminals now use advanced techniques like AI to create emails, websites and messages that closely mimic legitimate communications from trusted sources.
Most phishing attempts today look authentic, using logos, branding and language that resemble those of reputable companies or persons. This level of deception means that even well-trained individuals can fall victim to cleverly disguised phishing attempts.
Different Types of Phishing Scams
Phishing scams come in various forms, each exploiting different vulnerabilities. Understanding the most common types can help you better protect your business:
Email Phishing:
The most common type, in which cybercriminals send emails that appear to be from legitimate sources, such as banks or well-known companies. These emails often contain links to fake websites, which they use to steal sensitive information.
Spear Phishing:
Targets specific individuals or organizations. Attackers gather information about their targets to create personalized and convincing messages, making it particularly dangerous since it can bypass traditional security measures.
Whaling:
A type of spear phishing that targets high-profile individuals like CEOs and executives. The goal is to trick these individuals into revealing sensitive information or authorizing financial transactions.
Smishing:
A social engineering attack that involves sending phishing messages via SMS or text. These messages often contain links to malicious websites or ask recipients to call a phone number, prompting them to provide personal information.
Vishing:
Involves phone calls from attackers posing as legitimate entities, such as banks or tech support, asking for sensitive information over the phone.
Clone Phishing:
Attackers duplicate a legitimate email you’ve previously received, replacing links or attachments with malicious ones. This tactic exploits trust, making it hard to differentiate fake email from genuine communication.
QR Code Phishing:
Cybercriminals use QR codes to direct victims to malicious websites. These codes often appear on flyers, posters or email attachments. When scanned, the QR codes take you to a phishing site.
Protecting Your Business from Phishing Scams
To safeguard your business from phishing scams, follow these practical steps:
- Train employees regularly to recognize the latest phishing attempts and conduct simulated exercises.
- Implement advanced email filtering solutions to detect and block phishing emails.
- Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) on all accounts to add an extra layer of security.
- Keep software and systems up to date with the latest security patches.
- Utilize firewalls, antivirus software and intrusion detection systems to protect against unauthorized access.
Collaborate for Success
By now, it’s clear that phishing scams are constantly evolving, and staying ahead of these threats requires continuous effort and vigilance. Partnering with Databranch will allow you to focus on your business operation while we help tackle your cybersecurity needs.
Together, we can create a safer digital environment for your business. Don’t hesitate, get in touch today at 716-373-4467 option 6 or [email protected].
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You might be thinking that you’ve done everything to protect your business from cyberthreats. You have the most advanced security solutions to defend against external threats, but are you equally protected against internal threats?
Knowingly or unknowingly, your employees, your vendors, your partners and even you could pose a threat to your business. That’s why it’s crucial to know how to protect your business from within. In this blog, we’ll discuss various internal threats, how to identify red flags, and most importantly, how to avoid them.
Common Insider Threats
There are various types of insider threats, each with its own set of risks. Here are some common ones:
1. Data Theft
An employee or someone who is part of the organization downloads or leaks sensitive data for personal gain or malicious purposes. Physically stealing company devices containing privileged information or digitally copying them are both considered data theft.
Example: An employee of a leading healthcare service provider downloads and sells protected patient information on the dark web.
2. Sabotage:
A disgruntled employee, an activist or somebody working for your competitor deliberately damages, disrupts or destroys your organization by deleting important files, infecting an organization’s devices or locking a business out of crucial systems by changing passwords.
This is another reason why Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) solutions are crucial for a businesses operations. With our BCDR solution, any deleted files will have secondary offsite cloud-based storage locations.
Example: A disgruntled employee of a coffee shop deliberately tampers with the machine, causing malfunction and loss of business.
3. Unauthorized Access:
This is essentially a breach of security when malicious actors such as hackers or disgruntled employees gain access to business-critical information. However, individuals can mistakenly access sensitive data unknowingly, too.
Databranch highly recommends that businesses limit their users who have access to local administrative privileges. It’s best to set up a separate administrative account and limit employees to only access information that is pertinent to their job responsibilities.
Example: A malicious employee uses their login credentials to access privileged information and then leaks it to competitors.
4. Negligence & Error:
Both negligence and error lead to insider threats that can pose a security risk. While errors can be reduced through training, dealing with negligence would require a stricter level of enforcement.
Example: An employee might click on a malicious link and download malware, or they might misplace a laptop containing sensitive data. In both cases, the company data is compromised.
Databranch’s managed clients receive a layer of protection through our EndPoint Protection and Intrusion Detection software which continuously scan their devices for malware or threats. If a device is lost, our engineers also have the ability to remotely wipe any information, if possible, to help avoid data theft.
While these are beneficial, Employee Cyber Security Awareness training is always your first line of defense to avoid these situations alltogether.
5. Credential Sharing:
Think of credential sharing as handing over the keys to your house to a friend. You can’t predict what they will do with it. They might just take some sugar or they might use your home for hosting a party. Similarly, sharing your confidential password with colleagues or friends throws up a lot of possibilities, including an increased risk of exposing your business to a cyberattack.
Example: An employee uses a friend’s laptop to access their work email. They then forget to sign off and that personal laptop gets hacked. The hacker now has access to the company’s confidential information.
Spot the Red Flags
It’s crucial to identify insider threats early on. Keep an eye out for these tell-tale signs:
Unusual access patterns: An employee suddenly begins accessing confidential company information that is not relevant to their job.
Excessive data transfers: An employee suddenly starts downloading a large volume of customer data and transfers it onto a memory stick.
Authorization requests: Someone repeatedly requests access to business-critical information even though their job role doesn’t require it
Use of unapproved devices: Accessing confidential data using personal laptops or devices.
Disabling security tools: Someone from your organization disables their antivirus or firewall.
Behavioral changes: An employee exhibits abnormal behaviors, such as suddenly missing deadlines or exhibiting signs of extreme stress.
Enhance your Defenses
Here are our five steps to building a comprehensive cybersecurity framework that will ensure your business stays protected:
- Implement a strong password policy and encourage the use of multi-factor authentication wherever possible.
- Ensure employees can only access data and systems needed for their roles. Also, regularly review and update access privileges.
- Educate and train your employees on insider threats and security best practices.
- Back up your important data regularly to ensure you can recover from a data loss incident.
- Develop a comprehensive incident response plan that lays out the plan of action on how to respond to insider threat incidents.
Click here to download the fun infographic our team created about insider threats. This can be shared with other employees to help educate them on how they could be an insider threat along with how to be vigilant of others.
Don’t Fight Internal Threats Alone
Protecting your business from insider threats can feel overwhelming, especially if you have to do it alone. That’s why you need an experienced partner such as Databranch. As an IT service provider we can help you implement comprehensive security measures that fit your unique business needs.
Let us help you safeguard your business from the inside out. Reach out today at 716-373-4467 option 6 or at [email protected] and we’ll show you how we can both monitor for potential threats.
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Cybersecurity is an essential aspect of any business or organization. As technology evolves, so do the threats that can harm an organization’s operations, data and reputation. One of the most effective ways to defend against these threats is through the Defense in Depth (DiD) approach.
DiD is a cybersecurity approach in which multiple defensive methods are layered to protect a business. Since no individual security measure is guaranteed to endure every attack, combining several layers of security is more effective.
This layering approach was first conceived by the National Security Agency (NSA) and is inspired by a military tactic with the same name. In the military, layers of defense help buy time.
However, in IT, this approach is intended to prevent an incident altogether.
Essential Elements of DiD
Implementing all the elements of an effective DiD strategy can help minimize the chances of threats seeping through the cracks. These elements include:
1. Firewalls
A firewall is a security system comprised of hardware or software that can protect your network by filtering out unnecessary traffic and blocking unauthorized access to your data.
2. Intrusion Prevention and Detection Systems
Intrusion prevention and detection systems scan the network to look for anything out of place. If a threatening activity is detected, it will alert the stakeholders and block attacks.
3. Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions constantly monitor endpoints to find suspicious or malicious behavior in real time.
Databranch is excited to announce a new detection software that we have begun implementing for our clients. The Huntress Managed Detection and Response (MDR) for Microsoft 365 secures your users with 24/7 protection.
Huntress MDR can detect and respond to early signs of cyberattacks such as unauthorized access, email manipulation, and suspicious login locations.
The software then utilizes Huntress’s 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC) which is comprised of experts who analyze and interpret the threats. An actual Huntress employee will review these detections, provide incident reports, and will deliver actionable remediations for recovery.
4. Network Segmentation
Once you divide your business’s network into smaller units, you can monitor data traffic between segments and safeguard them from one another.
5. The Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP)
The principle of least privilege (PoLP) is a cybersecurity concept in which a user is only granted the minimum levels of access/permissions essential to perform their task.
Visit us here to learn more about the risks associated with Local Administrative Privileges.
6. Strong Passwords
Poor password hygiene, including default passwords like “1234” or “admin,” can put your business at risk. Equally risky is the habit of using the same passwords for multiple accounts.
To protect your accounts from being hacked, it’s essential to have strong passwords and an added layer of protection by using practices such as Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA).
7. Patch Management
Security gaps left unattended due to poor patch management can make your business vulnerable to cyberattacks. When a new patch is delivered, deploy it immediately to prevent exploitation.
Databranch offers a Patch Management solution for our managed client’s that automates and manages service packs, hot-fixes, and patches from a single location.
How IT service providers help defend against threats
As a Databranch client, our experienced team members will help you divide DiD into three security control areas:
1. Administrative controls
The policies and procedures of a business fall under administrative controls. These controls ensure that appropriate guidance is available and security policies are followed.
Examples include hiring practices or employee onboarding protocols, data processing and management procedures, information security policies, vendor risk management and third-party risk management frameworks, information risk management strategies, and more.
3. Technical controls
Hardware or software intended to protect systems and resources fall under technical controls.
They include firewalls, configuration management, disk/data encryption, identity authentication (IAM), vulnerability scanners, patch management, virtual private networks (VPNs), intrusion detection systems (IDS), security awareness training and more.
4. Physical controls
Anything that physically limits or prevents IT system access falls under physical controls, such as fences, keycards/badges, CCTV systems, locker rooms and more.
Don’t worry if you are struggling with developing a DiD strategy for your organization. Databranch is here to make things as simple as possible. Contact us at 716-373-4467 option 6, or [email protected] to start the process of making your organization more secure.
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