Would you open this? What do you see wrong here?

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

Just got a zoom meeting request.. hmm that looks odd.. Would they have got you with his scam?

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

Why Weak Passwords Are a Security Risk

by Robert Blake

A password is the most commonly used primary security measure for protecting access to websites. Passwords are also commonly used to restrict access to hardware devices, such as computers. While some people may consider the need to use passwords a nuisance, the reality is that we rely on passwords to keep prying eyes away from sensitive data.

Just creating a password may not be enough to protect data. If you choose simple passwords like "password," "qwerty," or "123456," you are greatly increasing the risk that your online accounts or local hardware can be accessed by third parties.

Who would try to access my computer or online accounts? 

Any person who wants access to information stored on your computer or in an online account may try to crack your password; it could be somebody known to you, such as a spouse, partner, relation or work colleague, or it could be a total stranger with fraud on his or her mind. You could also be subjected to automated attacks, where special apps try to break your password by using millions of combinations of characters.

Weak passwords 

Regardless of whether it's somebody you know, a total stranger, or an automated program that is trying to crack your password, if you have a weak password, you are at increased risk of your defenses being breached. 

Weak passwords are ones that can easily be guessed. They include combinations like those mentioned above or passwords based on the date of birth of you, your children, or other relatives. Those based on your favorite books, poems, songs, pets, or geographical locations associated with you are also potentially weak passwords. 

How your personal details can be found 

You may think it is unlikely that a stranger, or even an acquaintance, knows your date of birth, or information about your likes and dislikes. However, it is surprising how much information is in the public domain.

Social media platforms are great sources of information for people who may want to hack passwords. Those birthday greetings from your friends that say "Can't believe you're 20" reveal your date of birth. Greetings to or from "my favorite mum/sister/uncle/brother etc." reveal the names of other family members and their relationship to you. 

People regularly use social media to tell the world about their favorite pet, actor, movie, song, etc. In short, making innocent posts or comments online can reveal a lot of information about you. Even if you don't actively do this, other people can reveal your personal information in their posts or comments. Social media can be a rich source for people trying to break your password.

Automated attacks 

Unlike an individual trying to guess what your password is, automated, or brute force, attacks do not use information about you to assist them. Instead, they try various combinations of characters. While this may seem like a very inefficient way to crack a password, it should be remembered that it is often possible to try millions of combinations in a very short time. 

While these attacks use random sequences of characters, they are often structured to try well-known words or phrases first. These may be followed by combinations of common names and digits that could be dates. Weak passwords are likely to be discovered more quickly.

In summary, using simple passwords is risky. Individuals can try to guess your password based on your personal data. Automated attacks are more likely to find readable passwords, even if they are combinations of words and numbers. Avoid weak passwords if you want to keep your data safe.

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

The Week in Breach: Featured Threat

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Business Email Compromise is a Messy, Expensive, Preventable Disaster

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Securing highly privleged executive and administrator accounts has to be a high priority for every business

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Business email compromise is a nightmare proposition for any company. Trading firm Virtu Financial learned that lesson the hard way in May 2020 when it lost it lost $6.9 million in a nasty incident. 

The scam took off when a hacker accessed the email account of one of its executives, reading and analyzing that account’s email for at least two weeks. In phase two, the hacker altered the account’s settings and started sensing out their own fraudulent emails. 

The cybercriminals involved then moved into phase 3 of the scam. After monkeying with the inbox rules to hide certain messages from being seen by the account owner they sprung the most important phase of their plan: sending a series of emails to the company’s accounting department asking it to issue two wire transfers to banks in China. 

The accounting department didn’t see any red flags, and the two transfers, totaling about $10.8 million, were sent in due course in late May 2020. Shortly after the transfers were made, a routine audit clued accounting staffers into possible trouble but the damage was done, and Virtu Financial was only able to freeze $3.8 million of the money.

This whole nightmare stemmed from a single compromised executive email account. While the integrity of every credential is important to maintain security, executive and administrator credentials can cause the most damage to a company, as Virtu Financial learned to their peril.

It’s essential that every account for every user is under the umbrella of a strong secure identity and access management solution to prevent these incidents. Account compromise like this is frequently the result of a password compromise. 

No matter how it’s obtained, whether it’s through spear phishing or it’s a lucky break from a credential stuffing attack, that compromised executive password can be neutralized when a second credential is needed to login to the endangered account. Plus, secure shared password vaults enable companies and IT teams to keep passwords for essential systems and access points especially protected. 

Secure identity and access management was cited as the top priority of CISOs in a recent study on 2021 cybersecurity planning, and one reason it tops the list is that it goes a long way toward preventing disasters like this. Add Passly to your security offerings now to be ahead of the curve when it comes to securing your clients against business email compromise.

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

Malicious Insiders Could Be Just Around the Corner

Cybersecurity risks don’t just come from outside your business. Sometimes, it’s the new staffer in payroll or the disgruntled clerk in receiving that pose your biggest cybersecurity threat and you may not even notice them until it’s too late, like Shopify this week. 

But it’s not difficult or expensive to take sensible precautions against potentially malicious employees and you should do that right away – because it will happen to you. Insider threats like this are a never-ending source of worry for business owners, and that’s why secure identity and access management should be at the top of your list for solutions that help prevent malicious insiders from stealing sensitive information. 

Using a dynamic secure identity and access management tool like Passly gives you more control over who has access to what, enabling tight controls on sensitive data. It also adds protection against your staffers selling their login credentials by adding multifactor authentication. And if you do have a malicious inside incident, single sign-on LauncPads for every user makes it easy for your security team to cut off access for a user and limit the damage. 

Security experts at companies around the globe agree – secure identity and access management is a key component of a strong cybersecurity defense that acts as a major deterrent to malicious insiders. Adding a cost-effective solution like Passly to your security plan now can save you a fortune in incident recovery costs and heartache later.

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

Don't Take the Bait: 7 Signs of a Phishing Email You Need to Know

Phishing emails have become disturbingly more common in recent years. According to a study by Mimecast, roughly one out of every 61 emails sent globally is part of a phishing scheme. While that number may seem small, all it takes is a single phishing email to compromise your accounts, data and personal information.

You can still use email as a digital communications channel. However, you should learn the signs of a phishing email so that you can avoid taking the bait.

1) Initiated By the Sender

Phishing emails are almost always initiated by the sender. Cybercriminals use them to deceive recipients into divulging sensitive information, such as account usernames and passwords. Cybercriminals don't know when you last accessed your account, so most phishing emails are unsolicited. If a cybercriminal discovers your email address, he or she may send you a phishing email.

Because phishing emails are initiated by the sender, you can determine their legitimacy by contacting the company that he or she claims to represent. If you receive an email from what appears to PayPal, for instance, contact PayPal directly -- don't follow any links in the email -- to inquire about its legitimacy.

2) Locked Account

While there are several types of phishing emails, many of them will claim that your account has been locked or suspended. Some may claim that fraudulent activity was detected on your account, whereas others may claim that your billing information is incorrect. Regardless, the phishing email will likely ask you to log in to your account to restore its functionality.

Of course, login links in phishing emails don't point to legitimate websites. They point to malicious websites that are disguised as legitimate sites. When you click a login link in a phishing email, you'll be taken to the cybercriminal's website. It may feature the same name, logo and layout as a legitimate website, but entering your username and password won't allow you to access your account; it will only provide the cybercriminal with your login information.

3) Generic Salutation

Always check the salutation before interacting with or replying to an email. Phishing emails usually have a generic salutation. Rather than addressing you by name, they may address you as "loyal customer" or "valued account holder". Generic salutations such as these aren't used by legitimate websites. If you discover them when browsing your inbox, the emails are probably part of a phishing scheme.

Not all phishing emails use a generic salutation. A cybercriminal may use a personalized salutation if he or she knows your name. With that said, personalized salutations are far less common than generic salutations in phishing emails. Phishing is a numbers game. The more recipients who receive a phishing email, the greater the cybercriminal's chance of illicit success. Therefore, cybercriminals rarely take the time to identify recipients' names when sending phishing emails. They'll collect thousands of email addresses, after which they'll send the same phishing email with the same generic salutation to all recipients.

4) Unofficial 'From' Address

Phishing emails often have an unofficial "from" address. In other words, the email addresses from which phishing emails are sent don't match up with the websites they impersonate. Legitimate websites send emails using an official "from" address that matches their domain. If PayPal sends you an email, the "from" address will show service@paypal.com. Phishing emails, on the other hand, often have a "from" address with a different domain than that of the website they are impersonating.

The "from" address in an email can be spoofed, so you can't rely on that alone to identify phishing schemes. Spoofing occurs when a cybercriminal modifies the header data of an email. Unless it's authenticated using a technology like Sender Policy Framework (SPF), the email will likely be delivered with a spoofed "from" address.

5) Contextual Typos

You may come across one or more contextual typos in a phishing email. The body may contain misspelled words, incorrect punctuation, run-on sentences and other obvious typos. Legitimate emails can contain contextual typos as well, but most reputable brands strive to eliminate them in their emails.

Some people assume that typos are common in phishing emails because English isn't the native language of the cybercriminals behind them. Most cybercriminals are, in fact, located overseas where their digital footprints are harder to track, but that's not why phishing emails contain so many typos.

Phishing emails contain typos primarily to bypass spam filters. When a large number of recipients flag an email as spam, the inbox provider will add the message to its spam-filtering database. Any additional emails containing the same message will then be filtered as spam. By scrambling the content with typos, cybercriminals can trick inbox providers into thinking their phishing emails are unique.

6) Suspicious Link Address

Another sign of a phishing email is a suspicious link address. Phishing emails usually have a link. The link may consist of plain text, or it may consist of a button that looks like the same button used on a legitimate website. Either way, the link will have a suspicious address that doesn't match the domain of the website being impersonated.

You can view a link's destination address by hovering your cursor over it. Don't click the link. Instead, move your cursor over the linked text or button. You should then see the link's destination address displayed at the bottom of your web browser.

7) File Attachments

If a phishing email doesn't contain a link with a suspicious address, it will probably have a file attachment. Some phishing emails steal your information when you click a link, whereas others steal your information when you download a file.

File attachments in phishing emails often use the PDF, DOC, ZIP, SCR or EXE format. If you download any of these files, you may unknowingly infect your computer with malware. The malware may then log your keystrokes or otherwise steal your information as part of a phishing scheme.

Whether you use email for personal or business-related communications, you shouldn't blindly follow the instructions in these digital messages. If it's a phishing email, it could jeopardize your accounts, data and personal information.

By Robert Blake

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

Hackers for Hire are Here to Steal Corporate Secrets

 

As the rise of “as a service” cybercrime continues, some hackers aren’t just involved in ransomware and PII theft. They’re focused on specialized spying, like stealing trade secrets – and keeping them out of your business is easier than you think.  

Corporate espionage is a growing industry in a world where information can be currency. From state-backed actors trying to filch technology to data thieves who want the results of COVID-19 testing, thriving cottage industries have grown up around specialized corporate cybercrime.

These bad actors aren’t just focusing on global corporations or well-known institutions anymore – companies of every size are at risk of attack. But you can quickly and efficiently add safeguards to your systems and data to reduce your risk of corporate espionage, and it’s not even expensive.

Add a secure identity and access management solution like Passly to add safeguards against hackers that make it harder for them to break in with a stolen or cracked password. It’s also smart to add automatic phishing protection with Graphus to put strong protection between your business and cybercrime like phishing and ransomware.

By beefing up security with these solutions and staying alert for credential compromise with Dark Web ID, you can ensure that you’re ready for potential corporate hacking attempts to keep your proprietary data safe.

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