Phishing resistance training for students is a business problem too – because one bad click could open a gateway for cybercriminals into business data and systems.

Phishing resistance training for students is a business problem too – because one bad click could open a gateway for cybercriminals into business data and systems.  

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It’s back to school time for students around the globe. Considering the dismal state of cybersecurity education in US schools, many students aren’t aware of the potential dangers that they face from cybercrime like phishing. With a huge increase in IoT devices adding extra cybersecurity challenges when people work from home, cybersecurity awareness like phishing resistance training for students (through their parents) isn’t just a good way to keep kids safe online – it’s also a smart idea for keeping company data and systems safe from unforeseen dangers.

Everyone with an email account is a target for this year’s biggest cybersecurity threat: phishing. As kids continue with distance learning, that means that they’ll be using email more frequently. Most schools do not have sufficient email security to repel even a clumsy cyberattack, as a school system in Australia recently discovered. Cybercriminal know this, and they’ve been taking advantage of this opportunity by making more phishing attempts against schools to launch lucrative ransomware attacks 

Teaching parents and kids about phishing dangers won’t just protect them from danger, it will also protect companies from danger.  

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Consider this scenario: 

• A parent is working from home connecting to cloud-based services every day. 
• A child is distance learning and using cloud-based tools. 
• The child opens their home network to compromise by falling for a phishing attack. 
• The cybercriminals use that opening to penetrate security on other devices connected to that network – like the parent’s laptop. 
• They’re able to breach security on the laptop, giving them access to what it’s connected to – the parent’s employer’s systems and data.  
• The employer has a data breach, and no one is clear on exactly how it happened. 

The warning goes on to detail potential mitigations against this scam, including using warning banners for all emails external to an organization, ensuring that all systems have the latest security updates, and maintaining up-to-date antivirus signatures and engines. 

BullPhish ID Boosts Phishing Resistance Fast

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By updating and upgrading phishing resistance training for your staff, you’re also raising their awareness of overall cybersecurity. While company training won’t directly help children learn to spot and avoid phishing attempts, it will create greater security awareness in adults that they’re likely to share, because everyone wants to keep their children safe.

BullPhish ID is an ideal solution for both in-office and remote training. Up-to-date information and training around the latest phishing threats is presented in bite-sized pieces with memorable animated video, to help increase retention and understanding. 

• It’s simple to set up, fast to deploy, and easy to run. 
• Training raises your staff’s overall cybersecurity awareness, making them more alert to other potential phishing threats, like SMS text and chat phishing attempts. 
• Over 80 plug-and-play phishing resistance training kits are available, with 4 new kits added each month including COVID-19 threats. 
• Engaging animated video delivers effective training in bite-sized pieces for improved retention in 8 languages.  
• Online testing quickly determines who needs more training and enabling you to adjust training groups accordingly. 

Boosting a company’s phishing resistance and security awareness training is extremely effective – cybersecurity safety training can reduce incidents by up to 70%. And it doesn’t just have benefits for staffers in the office – it also keeps companies safe when staffers are working from home. Plus, by raising overall security awareness, you’re also giving your staffers important safety information that they can share with their children to help keep everyone safe from cybercrime.  

Want to learn more about network security, call us at 877.860.5863

Bit by bit helps client networks run smooth and secure.. visit our website at www.bitxbit.com/texas 877.860.5863

Why Phishing Resistance Training Matters: Defending Against the New SBA COVID-19 Relief Phishing Scam

Why Phishing Resistance Training Matters: Defending Against the New SBA COVID-19 Relief Phishing Scam 

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With an increase of more than 600% since the start of the global pandemic, phishing is the most common (and dangerous) threat of 2020. But not all phishing and spear phishing scams are built the same. Clever cybercriminals know they need to go the extra mile to try to pull off major scams with major paydays – and major consequences. Enter the new SBA COVID-19 relief phishing scam.  

In a Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warning that released on 8/12/20, the agency noted that it is “currently tracking an unknown malicious cyber actor who is spoofing the Small Business Administration (SBA) COVID-19 loan relief webpage via phishing emails. These emails include a malicious link to the spoofed SBA website that the cyber actor is using for malicious re-directs and credential stealing.” 

A clever and dangerous new scam preys on businesses

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So far, investigators have determined that the bad actors have kicked off their cybercrime spree by sending a phishing email to Federal Civilian Executive Branch and state, local, tribal, and territorial government recipients. 

Here’s the structure of the scam:

• A highly convincing phishing email hooks the user
• The subject line, SBA Application – Review and Proceed, looks legitimate
• The sender is marked as disastercustomerservice@sba[.]gov 
• Text inside urges the recipient to click on a hyperlink to address: 
  hxxps://leanproconsulting[.]com.br/gov/covid19relief/sba.gov 
• The domain resolves to IP address: 162.214.104[.]246 
• And that website appears to be intended for malicious re-directs and credential stealing 

The warning goes on to detail potential mitigations against this scam, including using warning banners for all emails external to an organization, ensuring that all systems have the latest security updates, and maintaining up-to-date antivirus signatures and engines. 

Bit by bit helps client networks run smooth and secure.. visit our website at www.bitxbit.com/texas 877.860.5863

FBI Warns Against Increased Danger From Netwalker Ransomware

Ransomware attacks are the monster in the closet that keeps IT teams up at night – and they’re only getting worse. Recently, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation released a new Flash Alert warning about the danger of Netwalker ransomware to businesses and infrastructure, as attacks with this tool ramp up against US-based targets. 

Companies of all sizes are at risk for ransomware attacks of this nature, especially in the healthcare, infrastructure, defense, or technology sectors. Netwalker ransomware has also been used to disrupt production lines, as unfortunately happened to a manufacturer of respirators urgently needed in the fight against COVID-19. 

To add to your defenses quickly, upgrade the protection on the access points to your data and systems by adding a secure identity and access management solution. Passly is an affordable and effective tool that combines multifactor authentication and single sign-on to create a more secure gateway to the heart of your business. 

Adding a dynamic tool like Passly strengthens your defense against cybercrime like ransomware and password hacking fast. Passly deploys in days, not weeks – because in today’s fast-evolving threat atmosphere, no business has time to wait and see what cybercriminals are up to next.

Bit by bit helps client networks run smooth and secure.. visit our website at www.bitxbit.com/texas 877.860.5863

The Hard Facts About Cybersecurity & Education

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Very few resources are expended on cybersecurity education in US schools. Before the pandemic, most school systems had no system in place for distance learning, and cybersecurity education wasn’t a priority – even schools that had adequate funding for technology were more likely to use it for coding or robotics. 

• 70% of US K-12 students are participating in part to fulltime distance learning.
• Less than 10% of K – 12 educators surveyed in one study were well versed in cybersecurity.
• Less than 45 percent of  K – 12 students receive regular cybersecurity and security awareness education. 
• Less than 50% of all of the teachers surveyed say that their or districts offer any cybersecurity education at all. 
• About 20% of schools offer no cybersecurity education at all. 
• On average, about 40% of schools teach basic digital literacy. 
• Cyberbullying is the most frequently taught cybersecurity topic.
• Student knowledge about cybersecurity is lower in public schools, especially in economically challenged areas.
• 100% of surveyed school districts use a firewall and a web content filter but only 3% use cloud security technology to monitor and secure their G Suite and Microsoft 365 environments.
• Less than 10 percent of educators say their students have learned about systems engineering, artificial intelligence, or cyberlaw in the past year. 
• Microsoft reported that 61 percent of the nearly 7.7 million enterprise malware encounters reported in June 2020 came from sources in the education sector. 

Bit by bit helps client networks run smooth and secure.. visit our website at www.bitxbit.com/texas 877.860.5863

Why should businesses be concerned with the state of cybersecurity education?

Because it brings unexpected risks to the table. 

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As the world continues to evolve in the wake of the global pandemic, every aspect of life has changed. Students are headed back to school and most will be attending virtually at least some of the time. With many parents still working from home, that means that everyone is sharing a network – and the underwhelming state of cybersecurity education for kids creates unexpected cybersecurity risks for businesses.

Cybersecurity isn’t a priority in most K – 12 curriculums. But cybercriminals have learned that kids are easy targets for social engineering attacks, and schools are generally way behind the curve in internal cybersecurity, creating openings for them to strike.

Bit by bit helps client networks run smooth and secure.. visit our website at www.bitxbit.com/texas 877.860.5863

Double Extortion Ransomware is in Fashion This Summer

In a tough economy, everybody’s looking for a way to make a little more money and increase profitability – even cybercriminals. Why should a cybercriminal only benefit once from the hard work of hacking into systems and deploying ransomware, when they could benefit twice?

Double extortion ransomware is becoming more trendy as a means of cybercrime because it opens up extra opportunities for profit as cybercriminals not only attempt to get paid by selling you the encryption key to unlock your systems and data, they also try to extort a little extra by threatening to release especially sensitive information on the Dark Web. 

The majority of ransomware infections are delivered via phishing- and phishing isn’t just an email threat these days. Instead of the proverbial malware-laced attachment, phishing has expanded to include attack attempts through malicious links, SMS messages, texts, chats, and more. 

By implementing and updated regular phishing resistance training, companies can improve their defense against ransomware. Choose an innovative solution like BullPhish ID that offers constantly updated, plug-and-play phishing training in bite-sized pieces using engaging video lessons in 8 languages to keep staffers on alert for suspicious messages and stop ransomware attacks before they start.

Bit by bit helps client networks run smooth and secure.. visit our website at www.bitxbit.com/texas 877.860.5863

The BlackBaud Breach Fallout Continues to Pile Up

The recent data breach at fundraising technology provider BlackBaud is an object lesson in how third party risks can compromise cybersecurity and cause huge problems for other businesses, leading to a cascade effect that keeps the damage rolling. 

Initially, BlackBaud obfuscated the details it released about the breach, including insinuating that the initial ransomware attack was unsuccessful. Two weeks ago, we reported on the real story of that breach, noting that BlackBaud had actually paid the ransom demanded for the encryption key. The company also claimed that very little user data was stolen and the breach would only impact a small subset of its users. 

Once again, that wasn’t necessarily the case. As the ripple effect of the initial breach became more apparent,large universities and institutions around the world began disclosing that information including details about their alumni, donors, and fundraising efforts had been compromised in the BlackBaud breach, Including The National Trust (UK), Texas Tech, the University of York, the University of South Wales, Aberystwyth University, and UK Charities including The Wallich, Crisis, Sue Ryder, and Young Minds.

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) told the BBC that 125 organizations had reported that they were impacted by the event, including dozens of universities and 33 charities. Internationally, the breach is expected to impact many more universities, trusts, museums, schools, churches, and food banks.  

So how can you protect your clients’ sensitive data and systems from breach danger or exposure because of third party service providers? We’ll be coming out with a new book addressing that problem soon, but here’s a sneak peek at our advice – and you can put this into practice right now.

Start employing single sign-on (SSO) and multifactor authentication (MFA) immediately. Those two tools combines add a strong barrier between cybercriminals and sensitive data and systems by giving IT staffers more control. MFA is often the star of the show when considering secure identity and access management solutions, but single-sign-on is the unsung hero. 

SSO allows for the creation of a unique Launchpad for every user, giving IT staff the opportunity to control each user’s access to applications and data with one action. If someone’s account is compromised, instead of figuring out what they ad access to and turning each one off individually, IT staffers can cauterize the bleeding quickly by simply deactivating that user’s Launchpad, eliminating their access to everything.

Get these essential protections and more with our freshly updated secure identity and access management solution Passly. Not only do you get MFA and SSO, Passly also includes easy remote management tools, secure password storage vaults, and seamless integration with over 1,000 commonly used business applications. Start using Passly now to provide an essential upgrade in protection from unexpected threats that won’t break the bank – and gets to work securing data and systems from Day 1.

Bit by bit helps client networks run smooth and secure.. visit our website at www.bitxbit.com/texas 877.860.5863