Posts

Phishing Attacks Spike Amid COVID-19 Crisis

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Cyber AttackIt should be no surprise to you that we are seeing a surge in phishing and other cyber attacks, as criminals look to take advantage of the COVID-19 crisis. A sample of recent news reports illustrates the scope of the problem.

  • In April, the FBI issued a warning about COVID-19 stimulus package scams (CNET).
  • In mid-April, Google reported the daily volume of malware and phishing attack emails jumped to more than 18 million per day (The Verge).
  • Last week, TechRepublic reported a surge in phishing emails trying to exploit DocuSign and COVID-19.
  • Hackers are impersonating Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet for phishing scams (The Verge 5/12/20).

Understand the Risk

The risk to your business, employees, and customers is greater at time when your systems may be less secure.

If your employees are using home computers while following stay-at-home orders and guidance, your risk of falling victim to an attack is significantly greater.  Most home computers do not have commercial-grade, next-generation endpoint protections and many run outdated versions of the consumer-grade products installed.

CPR is Still the Best Practice

Our model remains the best, holistic method of avoiding attacks at the human and tech levels, and for responding should something slip through.

Communicate & Educate

  • Remind your employees to be on the look out for suspicious emails, phone calls, web links.
  • Encourage your team to get help and verification if a message or interaction appears or feels suspicious in any way (better safe than sorry).
  • Consider testing employees with simulated attack messages and identify those that may need additional training and guidance.

Prevent & Protect

  • Deploy multi-factor authentication (MFA) and, optionally, single sign-on (SSO) services to prevent the use of compromised accounts.
  • Install Advanced Threat Protection solutions for inbound and outbound email to catch phishing, ransomware, and other illegitimate message.
  • Deploy “next generation” endpoint protection on computers and mobile devices to detect, prevent, and undo damage from dangerous files and applications.
  • Put Web and DNS protection services in place to prevent downloading attacks from hacked websites and identity impersonation.
  • Monitor the “dark web” for direct and third party breaches that may compromise your employees’ business accounts.
  • Take advantage of data loss prevention features built into G Suite and Microsoft 365, and consider tools to identify and prevent unauthorized access, permission errors, and data loss.
  • Eliminate the use of “shadow IT” services, particularly free or consumer-grade services by providing those capabilities to employees and making sure they know how to use them.

Restore & Recover

  • Ensure that you back up and can recover your data, regardless of location.  Your data is not just on your physical or virtual servers, it resides in your Microsoft 365 or G Suite environment, in SaaS applications like Salesforce, on desktops and laptops, and on mobile devices.
  • Put business continuity systems in place with affordable services that let you spin up and run images of your servers and workstations in a cloud data center while you recover your primary systems.
  • Have a breach response plan and service in place as an increasing number of attacks are stealing information, as effective data breach response involves:
    • Forensic analysis and recovery
    • Legal compliance with reporting requirements
    • Legal strategies to minimize liability
    • Increased customer service demand
    • Communications with customers, stakeholders, and the media
    • A potential need to provide consumer protection services
    • Cyber Insurance claims management

Fortunately for most businesses, putting these protections in place is affordable and can be done with minimal impact on your employees and their productivity.  Understand your needs, assess the value proposition (include the risks and costs of doing nothing), and deploy a solution that is the best fit for your business.

Please contact us for assistance as you evaluate your risks, needs, priorities, and solutions.

 

Cyber Protection: Time for New Best Practices to Safeguard Your Business in the Digital Age

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Cyber ProtectionAccording to a recent survey* of IT service providers, ransomware attack downtime costs 23 times more than requested ransom. The average ransom for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) victims jumped 37% to $5,900 from 2018 to 2019.  And lastly, the average cost of ransomware downtime jumped from $46,800 to $141,000, an increase of more than 200%. This underscored the importance of having cyber protection protocols in place in an increasingly digital age.

To add to your cyber security concerns, SMBs fall victim to cyber crime and ransomware attacks even when they have traditional antivirus, email/spam, ad/pop-up blockers, and endpoint protection in place.  67% of IT service providers report their SMB customers fall victim to phishing emails; 30% report that most customers still rely on weak passwords and access management.

The Need for a New Approach to Cyber Protection

Traditional cyber security solutions are no match for many cyber attackers. We need a new modernized approach to ransomware, with business continuity at the core.

Using business continuity as a guiding principle drives new best practices for preventing and responding to cyber security attacks. With a business continuity mindset, you focus on what is needed to keep the business running, and how quickly you can “return to operations”.  When we discuss business continuity, we understand that we need to take steps to prevent disruption, mitigate the scope of potential disruptions, respond effectively when disruptions happen, and have the systems and processes in place to recover quickly.

For over a year, we have promoted and refined our CPR model to help ensure appropriate data protection and security.

Implementing The Following CPR Model Can Help Combat Cyber Threats

Communicate and Educate: Involve everybody in the solution by educating your team on the risks, how to spot and report fraudulent content, and how their behavior can prevent or help an attack.

Protect and Prevent: Implement multi-layer, multi-vector protections that focuses on your people (identities), data, applications, and systems. Our data, our businesses, no longer sit comfortably hidden in a computer room behind a firewall.

Respond and Recover: No defense is perfect. Have services in solutions in place that let you recover and return to operations within a time frame that protects the health of your business. More than getting data and systems back on line, put in place the forensics, legal, public relations, and customer service resources you will likely need in a cyber attack emergency.

Here are 10 Actions you can initiate today to improve your cyber protection:

  1. Ensure your computing environment is protected across multiple attack vectors: Identity, Endpoints, User Data, Cloud Apps, and Infrastructure.
  2. Deploy multi-factor authentication, advanced threat protection, next-gen endpoint protection, and DNS/web protection across your ecosystem for a comprehensive baseline or protection.
  3. Encrypt your data at rest and in transit.
  4. Educate your team on the risk and how their actions can impact the business.
  5. Actively manage your cloud and “as-a-Service” subscriptions, standardize on-boarding and off-boarding of staff and contractors based on role, application needs, and appropriate access to data.
  6. Understand how your team uses your business and unauthorized (“shadow IT”) applications and services.  Reign in shadow IT by ensuring your business systems provide staff with the necessary capabilities.
  7. Test your staff’s behavior related to cyber attacks and follow up with additional coaching and guidance. Discipline and, if needed, terminate those who are unwilling or unable to adapt to the current realities of behavior and risk.
  8. Upgrade from data backup/recovery to a business continuity solution that will get you up and running in minutes or hours, instead of days, should an attack get past your defenses.
  9. Arrange in advance for the legal, forensic, PR, communications, and customer service resources you need to respond to an attack with a potential or actual data breach.  Prepaid breach response services give you nearly instant access, reducing your risks and liability while bundling in baseline cyber insurance coverage.
  10. Get cyber insurance, either a baseline policy bundled with Breach Response services and/or a fully underwritten policy from your business insurance provider.

Please contact us for more information about your cyber protection, available assessments, and solutions. We are happy to schedule a free, no obligation Cloud Advisor Session.

* Global State of the Channel Ransomware Report. Datto, Inc. Oct. 2019.

 

Cyber Insurance vs. Breach Response: Why Not Both?

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Cyber AttackIf you’re debating between cyber insurance and breach response, you should consider getting both to be fully protected. For example, cyber liability insurance covers monetary losses as well as legal protection in the event of a breach. A data breach response plan, on the other hand, will provide you with immediate resources to combat the cyber attack and protect your financial interests.

There is a large discussion, and no small amount of pressure, for businesses to obtain cyber insurance policies.  Articles appear in a range business and technology publications, from the Memphis Business Journal to the Wall Street Journal, and from Inc. Magazine  to Forbes. But getting the right cyber insurance policy is not easy, and can be costly. And while cyber insurance helps cover damages, many policies do not provide immediate assistance with managing your response to an attack or data breach.

Cyber Insurance

For SMBs, three key cyber insurance considerations are the barriers to entry, coverage exclusions, and coverage delays.

  • Barriers to Entry
    • Most cyber insurance policies go through underwriting to determine coverage limits and premiums. This means the insurer will want to review and audit your security related policies, procedures, and technologies. Insurance carriers may also demand that you invest in new or additional measures in order to qualify for a policy or to ensure the premiums will be affordable.  For many small and midsize businesses (SMBs), this process requires specialized skills, time, and money. Many SMBs will need to spend over $5,000, with some spending up to $20,000, in order to pass the underwriting process.
  • Coverage Exclusions
    • Cyber insurance claims are routinely reduced or declined due to non-compliance with policy requirements.  Even after the underwriting process, most cyber insurance policies include dozens of security requirements that must be in place and properly maintained.  Any gap or misstep can be costly.
  • Coverage Delays
    • If your business is the victim of a cyber attack, your response has legal requirements and requires specific technical expertise. Claims processing can delay your ability to secure the resources you need for hours or days.

Clearly, cyber insurance one piece of the solution, along with appropriate security measures.

Breach Response

Having a Breach Response plan and resources in place will save you time and money.

In any cyber attack, start by assuming the attackers have stolen information.  If an attack can encrypt your files, it can steal under-protected files and data from your systems.  With a data breach, federal and state laws dictate a range of reporting and communication requirements that, if missed, can trigger fines and legal action. With a data breach, you need a range of expert resources and you need them quickly.

  • Legal Expertise fluent in cyber security laws and regulations helps ensure you comply with reporting and communication requirements to minimize your legal and financial exposure.
  • Forensics Expertise can identify the cause, timing, and scope of the attack and any breach, and can help validate that the issues allowing the breach have been resolved.
  • Public Relations Services will help you communicate with employees, vendors, customers, and as is often the case — the press. Providing accurate and appropriate information can protect your business relationships and your public reputation.
  • Contact Center Services provide a place for customers, vendors, and associates to call for timely and accurate information.  You are further protecting your business relationships and reputation.
  • Credit Monitoring for individuals whose personal or business information may have been compromised can reduce litigation risk and may be required by law.

Final Thoughts on Cyber Insurance vs. Breach Response

While cyber insurance policies generally cover these services, most do so as part of the claims approval process. As such, you may be out of pocket for thousands of dollars and fighting for reimbursement once your claim is processed.

By subscribing to a Breach Response service, the resources and expertise you need are available instantly,  7×24, without any additional cost over the monthly or annual fee.  These services often include basic cyber insurance policies that do not require any underwriting.  For many SMBs, the annual cost of this type of Breach Response service, with basic cyber insurance coverage, is significantly less than the cost of the underwriting process for a traditional cyber insurance policy.  Additionally, you can use this policy for coverage until they completing a policy with underwriting, or to cover initial loss coverage under a higher deductible (lower premium) traditional cyber insurance policy.

For more information about Breach Response Services and affordable Cyber Insurance, please contact us for a no obligation Cloud Advisor call.

 

Webcasts

Get IT Ready for Recession

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(7/19/2022) – Cutting IT costs can help your bottom line in the near-term, but may do more harm than good. Smart IT planning helps your business survive and thrive through a recession and beyond.

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A Cyber Insurance Primer

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(6/21/2022) – With the increase in cyber attacks, cyber insurance is a necessity. All too often, however, businesses learn that the process is significantly more complicated. Cyber Insurance is a tool, not a solution.

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library

A Cyber Insurance Primer (Slide Deck)

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Slide Deck | Source: Cumulus Global —
Cyber Insurance is a tool, not a solution. This deck is from our June 2022 3T@3 Webcast: A Cyber Insurance Primer and discusses the what and why of cyber insurance and how it fits into your cyber security and incident response plans.

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Global Year in Breach – 2021

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eBook | Source: ID Agent —
2020 saw a cybercrime boom that included record-breaking phishing and ransomware threats. This report provides insights into the rapidly changing cybersecurity landscape; forecasts cybersecurity trends for 2021; and provides helpful advice about smart risk mitigations that fit every business and every budget.

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