What you should know about cybersecurity.
Sure ICT Solutions LTD, Coventry
This morning you have probably woken up to the news that British Airways (BA) has had a serious data breach where customers of the airline have had their personal and financial details compromised. It is thought that 380,000 transactions have been affected between the dates of August 21st and September 5th, at this stage it has been reported that only transactions made between these dates have been stolen. The information is thought to have been taken from BA's website and mobile app.
With the threat of cyber attacks becoming more and more sophisticated and frequent, Sure ICT Solutions LTD has written this blog post to help you protect you, your business and end users from an attack. Viruses will affect not only business networks they will also attack personal devices as well. I can not stress enough how important it is for you and your company to protect and prepare your business and home devices against such attacks.
A little history
The most expensive virus in the world was called 'MyDoom' and it became the fastest spreading email virus ever (affecting a quarter of a million users in one day during January 2004: Source: https://computer.howstuffworks.com/virus.htm), believed to have originated in Russia 'MyDoom' was sent out as an email with an attachment. The email worm gained access to the computer allowing remote access gaining control over the device.
How to protect your business and devices.
With approximately three billion active social media profiles in the world (a hackers delight) there are many different ways a hacker/cyber attacker can mess around with your personal profiles and hardware including:
- Phishing
- Misusing personal information
- hacking: shutting down or misusing computer networks
- spreading hate & inciting terrorism
- distributing disturbing material
- grooming and making sexual advances to minors.
(Source: https://www.government.nl/topics/cybercrime/forms-of-cybercrime)
Phishing
Phishing is a cyber crime and targets users of the internet by posing as a trusted source e.g. bank; insurance company or business. It is an attempt to gain information from you including things like passwords; pin codes; bank account numbers; usernames and sometimes asking you to send money.
How can you prevent phishing?
- Protect your emails by using spam filters. What does the filter do? Well, the filter will assess the message sent to you as well as the software used to send the message by picking up words in the subject line.
- Browser settings should be changed by using a anti-phishing toolbar, these toolbars will run checks on the sites you are looking at and match any against a list of known phishing sites.
- Using Firewalls. There are two different types of Firewalls that will help you and your business protect you against cyber attacks, a network firewall and a desktop firewall. A desktop firewall is a piece of software and the network firewall is hardware, using both combined will set up a defence against attacks from hackers.
- Always ensure that the website URL starts with 'https' and a padlock at the beginning of the address and check the sites security certificate. Doing all this will prevent any malicious attacks.
- Always keep browsers up-to-date. You can do this by regularly updating the download that has been released.
Misusing personal information
Misusing personal information otherwise known as Identity Theft is at a record high in the UK with a a record high of 174,523 incidents last year – with the vast majority of it happening online.
(Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/18/id_theft_in_uk_at_record_high_cifas_report/)
How can you prevent identity theft?
- Choose strong passwords, never (ever) go with easy to crack passwords like your birthday/date. Always use a combination of letters, numbers and symbols to create a strong password and change it regularly.
- When inputting sensitive information always ensure that in the browser box at the top of the page is a green padlock and that the website address starts with http.
- Always ensure you set your privacy settings on profiles online so that people are unable to access personal information about you including birthdays; address; phone number; bank account information and anything that can be pieced together.
- Always check statements from the bank.
Hacking: shutting down or misusing computer networks
A hacker is someone is who is trying to access your computer, it is seen as a challenge to try and enter such high profile systems like that of British Airways.
How to protect from hacking?
- Install anti-virus software, always ensuring that this is updated.
- If you use windows it has a built in firewall feature that will protect your PC check that the Firewall is working and protecting your network.
- Ensure that all your employees have strong passwords that are regularly changed.
- Provide clear and concise guidelines to all end users on how to protect the business or even the home from a cyber attack.
There are many ways to protect your systems, end users, social media and information from potential hacking threats. Sure ICT Solutions can prepare you to assist your business from cyber crime. We will design you a secure network protecting your external and internal network systems from these potential threats. The theft of personal details from BA today is considered to be one of the UK's most serious cyber attacks and will no doubt incur serious penalty charges to the company.
Working in the IT Security industry has allowed Sure ICT Solutions LTD to see the devastation it causes businesses and their employees when an attack of this magnitude occurs. It is always best to invest in the right network protection as well as teaching your employees or even family how best to secure their devices and hardware from the potential threat.
To contact Sure ICT Solutions LTD please email Enquiries@sureict.com or visit www.sureict.com where we will be happy to chat with you about how best to protect your business or home network system.
Sources:
https://www.government.nl/topics/cybercrime/forms-of-cybercrime
http://www.phishing.org/what-is-phishing
http://www.bbc.co.uk/consumer/22342924