The holidays are a Bonanza for cybercriminals. With the joy of the season in all of our hearts, our normal skepticism tends to wane at least a little. Even though Black Friday and Cyber sales are almost at an end, and we (hopefully) have completed most of our holiday shopping by this point, we want to be extra careful as we end out the year.
With the last minute bargain hunting in full force for Christmas, criminals are out in force to make big paydays at the end of 2019.
They are stealing passwords and credentials in force this holiday season.
How do I know this?
As a cybersecurity expert, I spend a lot of my time monitoring and keeping track of what is out on the Dark Web (I also do a lot of Dark Web monitoring for clients). Let me be frank with you—there is a lot of new material out there! And a lot of it comes in at the end of the year every year.
Act NOW!
The emotional headlines that might encourage you to go over the edge and splurge on some purchase—NOW half off!—might be the very lure that criminals are setting up as honey pots. They are trying to look as sweet and tantalizing as can be, and are awaiting for you to input your information. Maybe they’re spoofing Amazon’s login page, or maybe they simply are waiting for debit card numbers to be input into their form submission (Note: when shopping online, please use a credit card).
Whatever the end objective, they are getting more people to click and input somewhat sensitive information to exploit later on. In the chaos of the season, you might not be any wiser until they’ve ran off with thousands of dollars of your hard earned money.
They’re getting better tools!
There are software developers selling their wares on the Dark Web—just like a holiday bizarre. They have actual usable data—credit cards and other illegal products—for exploiters to further use.
They also have kits to penetrate your business network, are using SEO (search engine optimization), ad campaigns and other marketing tools to reach your teams and get them to take action. Their targets are typically completely unsuspecting and have no second thought about following through with what they are being asked to do.
So what are you—as a business leader—supposed to do to keep safe?
It’s extremely important that you understand nothing is completely secure. Cybercriminals will continue to evolve their techniques to penetrate your network or deceive your team. They also will go to great lengths to become less detectable when on your network. But with that said, there are some guidelines you should follow throughout the year, but especially during the holidays:
Be diligent about your supply chain—point of sale devices have been a target of criminals for a long time (they still are). But besides POS devices, criminals are targeting other aspects of your supply chain. The most common at the end of 2019 have been different vendors like HVAC vendors, IT support teams and third-party software and cloud providers. Hackers are targeting vendors that have access to your data because they see them as more lucrative targets than to many other industries.
Authenticate on more than simply a password—when logging into accounts, especially ones storing sensitive data, security experts recommend using multi-factor authentication methods, such as text messages, tokens, or email to verify you are who you say you are.
Monitor your identity on the Dark Web—make sure that your personal information is secure. If there is information on you on the Dark Web, be proactive about what is out there.
Plan ahead—when it comes to cybersecurity, the most important thing you can do is be aware and try and stay ahead of cybercrime. Have a process in place to handle compromised data and be prepared to deal with scenarios of ransomware attacks or breaches and extortion scenarios.
The more you plan and prepare, the better prepared for the next ransomware attack or breach. I do not want anything to happen to you. If you have any questions about keeping your data safe, feel free to give us a call.
