Two major cyber threats to protect your business from:
Phishing and spear phishing
Phishing is a form of cyber-attack that uses social engineering strategies to encourage victims to reveal sensitive, confidential information or download malware to their device. Most commonly, phishing occurs via email, although it can take place over text messages or other communication platforms.
Phishing attacks have been around for years, but since the beginning of the pandemic they have increased drastically. Cyber criminals attempted to exploit the unique and uncertain social situation the pandemic created. They sent out phishing scams related to coronavirus, mirroring official government messaging, and targeted the masses who were more vulnerable to cyber-crime once working from home.
The sophistication of phishing emails has also improved recently, with spear phishing becoming a greater problem. Spear phishing targets specific individuals or organisations using information that appears directly applicable to them. The less generalised messaging makes spear phishing a more dangerous, convincing, and successful method of phishing. It is no surprise that more people are likely to open emails or messages that appear to be unique to them.
Luckily, there are ways to protect your business from phishing attacks. Anti-spam email filters are an excellent way to start defending yourself, by preventing the emails from reaching your employees’ inboxes in the first place. However, the most effective way of protecting your organisation is by investing in cyber security training. Your staff are going to be the ones receiving phishing emails. If they don’t know what to look for, how can they be prepared? At Apex, we offer comprehensive cybersecurity training as part of our Premium security package. As part of this, we send out fake phishing emails to your team, to test their ability to notice and avoid scams.
Ransomware
Ransomware has become a significant cyber security risk in 2021 and will continue to be into next year. Typically, ransomware encrypts the victim’s data until they pay a fee to recover it. However, over the past year double-extortion ransomware has become a greater threat. Cyber criminals steal your data and threaten to publish it, rather than just encrypting it so you cannot use it. The fear of having your confidential information exposed is supposed to act as the incentive to pay the ransom.
There are a number of ways to protect your business against ransomware. For instance, you and your team should avoid clicking on unsafe links, and therefore it is vital that you have an awareness of phishing scams. Firewalls and monitoring are also key methods of defence. As part of our fully managed, cyber security stack Apex will help to install robust firewalls and monitor all traffic entering your network to avoid ransomware attacks. Across all our security packages we monitor your anti-virus health and Windows updates, and we also monitor Office 365 and the Dark Web as part of our Standard and Premium packages, to offer you full protection.
Don’t leave your business open to attack. Equip your business with the best possible defence: knowledge.
To learn more about the range of modern cyber security risks in the digital sphere and how to protect your company against them, download our comprehensive cyber security eBook now.
