National Cybersecurity Month

Did you know October 2015 was National Cybersecurity Awareness Month ?   Conceived by President Obama it is “designed to engage and educate public and private sector partners through events and initiatives with the goal of raising awareness about cybersecurity and increasing the resiliency of the nation in the event of a cyber incident.”

Engaging and educating are always worthy political objectives but there are a number of commercial  insights that should be shared with your employees…here is listing of publically available material from the Department of Homeland security with the Small to Medium sized business in mind.  There is a similar listing of material for larger enterprises as well.

Don’t Believe Everything You Read

Unfortunately there are other threats lurking on-line to which your employees should be sensitized. This past Sunday’s New York Times ( Dec . 6, 2015)  had an article entitled “ All the Feedback Money Can Buy”.  It concerned a Jewelry store whose Facebook rating fell from 4.8 stars to 2.3 stars literally overnight.  The managers of the store believe the “bogus” reviews came from a website called “Fiverr” where people are paid to perform odd-jobs for $5.00 or more.   In this instant, as you may have guessed, the Jeweller alleges a competitor hired “reviewers” through Fiverr  to write negative reviews about his shop.  Fiverr was loathe to discuss the matter with NYT columnist David Segal but suffice it to report  Fiverr retains 20% of every transaction and so if something generates revenue why discourage it.  The Times notes that, notwithstanding a number of outstanding  lawsuits with industrial majors like Amazon, there seems to be “lots of gigs on Fiverr offering to spam Apple, Facebook, and Google sites with paid-for reviews.”

Tech Data Says

Jolera’s strategic partner, Tech Data  deals with Cybercrime in its Sept/Oct 2015 issue of Techtimes.  It introduces us to a number of plays from the criminals’ gamebook.

“Trojanizing”, is a technique of hiding “malware inside software updates.”  So an individual basically infects himself or herself.

Another type of malware is “crypto-ransomware.” Like other ransom methods something of value (your files) are held ransom until a fee is extorted, usually anywhere from $ 300 – $500.  Pay the ransom and you get your files back…”   assuming your thieves are ethical.

Mobile businesses are susceptible as well reports Tech Data..

• 31% of Google Play apps have more than 50,000 downloads that contain remote exploitable vulnerabilities
• iOS vulnerabilities have nearly tripled since 2011. Android vulnerabilities have nearly doubled.
• One million Android apps were actually malware in disguise.

This is how Cyberthreat tried to summarize 2015 from a security perspective.  I know its complicated but a close look-see will prove interesting and scary. 2016  doesn’t look much better.

Call Jolera Now !

There really is no time to be lost.  Jolera is here to help you plan to avoid,  but to be prepared for a cybersecurity disaster.  We can arrange on-line employee training sessions,  measure employee performance for you  and point out groups requiring additional training.  Let’s get this done together.