What can we do to protect ourselves?

It takes a tremendous amount of time to research and constant learning to be a cyber security specialist. That is why it is very important to not rely on just anybody to look after security of your network and data. Online safety is vital to micro and small businesses as well as industry giants. We cannot rely on old and free antiviruses anymore because cyber criminals are constantly changing the methodology of their attacks. They are becoming more and more sophisticated and ever bolder, with every win and the fact that it is very difficult to capture them helps them feeling free to do what they want, costing the world economy millions of dollars each year, with a huge increase since the beginning of pandemic.

But who are these people who constantly threaten our online freedom? How can we find them? There are online security experts who’s job it is to track them. Every attack leaves a trail of used IP addresses of servers, malware metadata, fonts and languages used for phishing emails. The experts can analyze behavior, configuration settings and other data related to the attacks and, by piecing all these clues together, are able to find patterns which helps them to create a picture of who is behind each attack. These are grouped by their campaigns and behavior, rather than nationality or organization. The cyber criminal network is vast and very fragmented and definitive attribution of certain characteristics is not always possible. *

Some cyber criminal rings work like franchises with more sophisticated part of the ring creating the malware and the infrastructure to run the attack and the less sophisticated ones may rent the service for the attack paying to use it for a time or might be getting a cut from each successful compromise. They may work as distributors of malware earning a commission for each “infection”. Because many different groups may use the same set of tools and infrastructure it is very difficult to pinpoint a specific one.*

As you can see the setup is quite sophisticated and it causes difficulties in capturing the culprits, however a part of one such a group (several alleged members of the group behind Emotet botnet, responsible for nearly 10% of malicious email traffic worldwide in 2020) was arrested in January 2021. Since then, the group’s activities have all but disappeared. *

This is an example for just one type of operation and there are others utilizing different methodology, deploying different types of attacks, changing their targets, technics, and procedures often, making it even more difficult to find out who is behind them.

What can we do to protect ourselves? Make sure your network is secure and you perform proper computer maintenance and run system security updates. Be smart online: use smart password management. Use proper, modern antivirus with end-point protection. Backup, backup, backup – I can’t stress enough how important good, managed backup is (and no, OneDrive or Google Drive or free Dropbox are not backup solutions and will be infected along with your system! No backup -no data…).

For more information on how to protect your business call us. After all consultations are free!

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*Information based on “The Human Factor 2021” a cybersecurity report by proofpoint