If your company benefits from having IT managed services in Australia then your IT department and your computers may have already been informed and updated on what has been going on lately in the technological world but it would not hurt to stay apprised of technological NEWS that could affect your business.
Aussie Hacking Peak Hours
Believe it or not, just like any other activity, there is a most effective time for hackers to hit Australian in-boxes with fake receipts and invoices that lead to phishing sites and catching people unaware that they are already being hacked. Tuesday mornings are a nightmare for managed services teams in Australia when it comes to filtering such bogus emails. Proofpoint, a cyber security company, mentioned in their Factor 2016 report on cyber security, that cyber criminals target on the go people who are swiftly clearing their email in-boxes for the busy day ahead, hoping that managed services groups in Australia have not had a chance to filter or apply countermeasures to protect users that early in the morning.
Kevin Epstein, the VP for Threat Operations of Proofpoint says that instead of sending links to websites that contain malware, most of the fake emails sent led to crafty bogus webpages that looked almost exactly like the original ones which fooled people into entering their login information. Many credentials, usernames, and passwords are stolen this way that is why a dependable managed services group in Australia should also focus on filtering spam emails and regularly monitoring websites visited by users within the business network. A managed services team in Australia that keeps a close watch on visited links would be able to block bogus phishing websites so that employees would not fall prey to such phishing sites.
Managed services groups in Australia should also be aware that hackers are bolstering their efforts beyond sending bogus emails during Tuesday morning peak times to focusing on social media and SMS using phishing links on social media posts. The peak time for social media posts with phishing links is during the afternoon because that is commonly when people are looking for distractions and taking a break from their work.
The hackers’ primary goal is to be able to access online banking accounts, like in the recent phishing cam using SMS to target ANZ online banking clients. Internet banking access is also the foremost target of hackers who send malicious files. A dependable managed services group in Australia would be prepared with anti malware installations so banking trojans and other malicious files that may have been downloaded onto your business machines would quickly be detected and dealt with before it spreads onto the business systems and networks and before it causes any damage.
Online scammers do not only cast their net wide using bogus emails and phishing websites, they also target certain businesses using complicated spear-phishing attacks to spoof communications from high ranking executives within a certain company. These fake emails often contain fake invoices and instructions to ship products, transfer funds for payments, and grant access to sensitive business information. Many businesses, even those with experienced IT managed services support in Australia, have fallen prey to such attacks in the past year. If you get similar instructions from your departments heads almost everyday of the week then you would not have much reason to be suspicious of such emails and that is why these Business Email Compromise or BEC cyber attacks are particularly hard to defend against as they target specific staff members who usually authorise and complete payment and shipping tasks. To be safe from such attacks? Hire a dependable managed services group in Australia to configure your business email servers to detect fake emails and authenticate internal emails. Filters for emails containing words like “transfer” or “payment” could also be put in place. Educating staff members of such tricks and setting stricter rules like never processing payments without face to face or verbal confirmation via telephone, would also be a good way to avoid being victims to these online criminals.
Hackers know that computers are not that easy to fool and there may be technical hurdles that managed IT services teams in Australia may have put in place (like anti-malware, anti-virus, and other security programs), so they rely mostly on human error and our nature of being curious enough to click on links.
