Business Threats & Hijacked Customers.
Hello Cyber Family! It’s another wonderful week to talk tech! Today we are chatting about cyber threats to business, hijacked customers, and methods/measures to protect against them. This week I chatted with Mattew Meis, CEO of DomainAlarm. Mr. Meis is a wealth of knowledge and passionate about educating the community on how they can protect themselves against potentially devastating cybercrimes.
We asked, what is the greatest cybersecurity threat to modern business? The answer may surprise you; it is you! According to the 2021 IC3 2021 data report the largest threat to users is Phishing and Business Email Compromise (2021 internet crime report, n.d.). Mr. Meis tells us “The interesting thing about both of these attacks is that they directly involve an individual giving up credentials or access to a machine either to malware or an attacker themselves.” It's no secret that these types of attacks are becoming smarter and harder to detect, it's important for all users to stay vigilant and up to date on new methods attackers are using.
You may think..."So what? They get some of my companies information, is that really that big of deal?" The answer is actually much more devastating than you may realize...
"BEC losses in the US hit almost $2.4 billion last year! Phishing directly cost US companies $44 million, but lead to malware and other incidents down the line costing much more. Generally, every $1 invested in cybersecurity now prevents about $3 of damage later. That is a return on investment you won’t get in other departments." - Matthew Meis
Monetary loss is not the only risk unchecked cybercrime threats may pose, a compromised company is also at risk of losing customer trust, social standing, and business functionality, ultimately having the potential of crumbling a business from the inside out.
What industries are most at risk, and how can they protect themselves against cybercrime?
"The top 4 industries we are seeing targeted are Healthcare, Financial Services, IT, and Critical Manufacturing. Outside of these industries, we also see small and medium-sized business disproportionately targeted. Companies that think they can’t or won’t get hit are playing a numbers game that is slowly shifting in favor of the criminals.
Three steps can help any business beef up their security for low to no cost (especially steps 1 and 2).
Step 1: Evaluate Your Current Risks
You must understand your company and the risks to it. You need to document what risks your business has and what value your business possesses that an attacker may want. This may take time, but does not cost a lot of money to do. Here are some starter questions:
Do you know your network and what happens in and around it? Do you know your exposure to the internet? How many employees work from home or have access to company information outside of the organization's walls? Are there devices accessing your network that aren’t company controlled? Do you have an inventory of every device that is company controlled?
Step 2: Decide What to do with the Risks
Look at your list and for each risk decide if you will accept it, mitigate it, or transfer it. You can make this choice by thinking about the likelihood of the risk and the impact it would have on your organization.
Step 3: Act on Risks
This is the part that may or may not cost some money. You must now take action on all the risks you want to mitigate or transfer. Transferring is fairly easy, get some insurance or a third party to accept the risk you don’t. You will pay for that transfer of risk, but less than if this risk happened. If you are mitigating the risk there are lots of open source and free options out there along with paid vendors."- Matthew Meis
The Customer Highjack
No matter what field you are in, it is likely that your customers will find, and interact with your business online. This is an amazing feature for business functionality, clients can reach you at the tap of a button. However, what if they are hijacked before they ever reach your website? It happens more often than you may think, to the tune of millions a year with look-a-like-domains. "Cybercriminals register hundreds of thousands of look-alike domains every year to impersonate reputable brands and make a profit. These domains are used for a variety of attacks including phishing emails, fraudulent websites, web traffic diversion, and malware delivery." (Ellis, J. (2021, June 27). This can all seem really overwhelming, how can a person know if their domain is being impersonated? There are a few ways that we can explore. If you are in the market for outsourced monitoring and would like to be alerted as soon as a threat is detected, hiring a company like DomainAlarm would be an amazing option. Matthew Meis was able to elaborate on the process of how DomainAlarm detects digital predators. "When we detect a new look-a-like domain that was registered or had a certificate created we alert our customers. We provide a takedown service for some customers, but for most they will evaluate the email alert in our online alert investigation tool and then request the takedown of the site themselves."- Matthew Meis This means their clients can get the malicious domains taken down before the attacker is able to commit a cybercrime with it, jeopardizing company integrity.
If you are in the market for self monitoring, Mr. Meis has suggestions for you as well! "ICANN is great! You can sign up for a free account and then request DNS Zone files for free. I highly recommend this to those who want to roll your own detection. Create an account with ICANN here: https://account.icann.org/app/. We’ve also created a simple open-source tool to use to quickly search DNS zone files. You can find that free tool on GitHub: https://github.com/DomainAlarm/domain-scanner."
The ultimate takeaway from this is, cybercrime is not a dark shadow hiding in someone else's neighborhood. Threats are closer than you think and if you haven't already it's time to start making a plan to protect yourself, business, clients and community.
Evaluate | Decide | Act
(https://domainalarm.net/) has a mission to make the online world a safer place to do business. We welcome everyone to our community so we can band against crime and protect our partners. Through our free and paid proactive defenses we are stopping criminals before they get a chance to start their attack. Be protected and be proactive with DomainAlarm.
2021 internet crime report. (n.d.). Retrieved July 16, 2022, from
https://www.ic3.gov/Media/PDF/AnnualReport/2021_IC3Report.pdf
Ellis, J. (2021, June 27). The anatomy of a look-alike domain attack. PhishLabs. Retrieved July 18, 2022, from https://www.phishlabs.com/blog/the-anatomy-of-a-look-alike-domain-attack/
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