Taking Advantage of the Situation

Some would think that during a pandemic, hackers and various bad actors would be sympathetic to the situation and disrupt society less but you would be mistaken. There has been a 250% uptick in ransomware and phishing attempts since the Pandemic started in March. The main reason for this is the ability to take advantage of people while they are distracted.

Our firm performs Security Awareness Training for a number of our clients and the number of phishing attempts that have been clicked on by end users is also on the rise. We believe the reason is that people are primarily working from home or in office environments that seem “dangerous” to them and their awareness has been diminished. We are conditioned to look at who is around us, wearing a mask or not, that we forget to be vigilant with our email and internet security.

In the last week alone three of our clients nearly fell victim to over $3 million of fraudulent wire scams mainly because an employee was distracted and didn’t follow protocol.

Even though the world is a bit upside down right now don’t believe that bad actors will give you any sympathy… the flood gates have opened and its time to protect your systems!