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February 2018

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Valentine’s Day Tips to Avoid Being Hacked

Image result for keyboard and love image

This is the season we all look forward to, Valentines! However, not everyone has the same interest as you lovebirds.  Hackers will use any kind of bait to infect as many users as possible through social engineering techniques. These attacks are usually aimed at:

–  Drop a malware on the computer in order to steal the user’s confidential information.

–  Turn users’ PCs into zombie computers later used to increase traffic to a specific website, crash a website, etc.

“I Love you”, “Happy Valentíne” or “I miss you” are among the worms most often used at this time of the year.

Here are 6 tips to avoid Valentine’s Day cyber scams

Here are some tips to prevent your Valentine’s Day from becoming a nightmare.

1. Do not run attached files that come from unknown sources. Stay on alert for files that claim to be Valentine Day’s greeting cards, romantic videos, etc.

2. Do not click any links included in email messages, or received through Facebook or Twitter, even though they may come from reliable sources. If you do click on any such links, take a close look at the page you arrive at and if you don’t recognize it, close your browser.

3.  Even if the page seems legitimate, but asks you to download something, be suspicious and don’t accept the download 

4.  If you make any purchases online, type the address of the store in the browser, rather than going through any links that have been sent to you. Only buy online from sites that have a solid reputation and offer secure transactions.

5. Do not use shared or public computers, or an unsecured WiFi connection, for making transactions or operations that require you to enter passwords or other personal details.

6.  Have an effective security solution installed, capable of detecting both known and new malware strain. Keep it up to date.

 Have you received any suspicious emails lately? Kindly contact us for further information! 

Make employees care about cyber security with this 10 tips

Did you know your employees are your best assets, and you need to invest in them continually? If you did not know, now you know. Get them patched frequently, else you’re always going to have vulnerabilities. Even in a company with one employee or thousands, it’s worth training them as opposed to taking on the risk of a breach and this is because they represent a large potential attack surface in every organization. Take it from Techinnovar.

Here are 10 tips for best cyber risk practice for all employers.

  1. Perform “baptism by fire” training exercises

The best training today is “baptism by fire” training, in which the users undergo a simulated attack specific to their job, I would say.

Let them become a victim to an attack that’s arranged by a security department or an outside cybersecurity company, and then they’re asked to understand the lessons they’ve learned from that attack, and the implications on the business, on their personal lives and how they could have prevented it. And then they’re asked to share that experience with their peer group through a report.

By performing regular phishing tests, in which the IT team sends out a fake phishing email to all employees across the organization, and gauge how many people click on it. Then, they can break that data down by departments and types of messages, to tailor training to problem areas. It also allows the company to show progression.

  1. Top management involvement.

The IT team need to make the rest of the team aware of the ramifications of a potential breach. Typically, to have a good cyber plan, you have to have a lined item in the budget for people, hardware, or software, year after year. That means getting the CFO, and CEO of the company involved.

  1. Start cyber awareness training for every new employee

Every first-time employee joins the company, start building the mindset as all new hires go through security training from day one. That way they learn from day 1 that cybersecurity is important and that they are going to get continuous training.

  1. Frequent system evaluations

Make a timetabled plan for performance evaluations of both employees and systems to find out how vulnerable your organization is to attack. Until you do that, you won’t know how bad or good your security posture may be. Like we say here at Techinnovar, we detect to protect!

  1. Communication flow

Create a good communication culture for cybersecurity information to all employees, to get all departments on board with training and learning best practices. This will help break down the topic creating alignment, and this helps people work on it together.

  1. Have a handy formal plan

IT teams should develop a formal, documented plan for cybersecurity training that is reviewed and updated often with the latest information on attack vectors and other risks that are bound to occur.

  1. Appoint cybersecurity culture ambassadors.

Tech leaders should appoint a cybersecurity culture ambassador in every department at their organization. These representatives can act as an extension of the IT team and keep employees trained and motivated. That’s something that’s often overlooked—use the resources you already have in the company beyond the IT team.

  1. 8. Training, training and more training

Do not shy away from Cybersecurity training. You should make it a continuous process throughout the year, at all levels of the organization, specific to each employee. If you’re an end user, there must be training associated with the types of attacks you might receive—for example, attacks on your email or attacks that are oriented on the type of job you hold. If you’re in IT, the attacks may be more technical in nature in terms of the attacks you might be seeing.

  1. Insist on the importance of security both at work and at home.

IT teams should help employees appreciate the importance of cyber hygiene not just in the workplace, but also at home. Teach users about privacy, security, and how the lessons learned at work can apply at home and in their personal lives to give them a ‘what’s in it for me’ they can apply all the time, not just at work.

  1. Reward employees

Make it a fun-fair by rewarding employees that find malicious emails and share stories about how users helped thwart security issues. IT leaders should also empathize with employees who make mistakes: Many employees send or receive hundreds of emails per day, so asking them to avoid one of those can be difficult.

While these training tips can help, education is not a permanent solution but, just one aspect of defending the environment from advanced attacks.

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