Scams Rise During A Pandemic Era

Scammers are having a field day during the COVID-19 era. The pandemic era has created a lot of opportunities for cybercriminals to exploit financial strain, stress, and fear of people.

There’s no approved treatment and vaccine yet for COVID-19, but scammers have already managed to sell unauthorized test and cure for the disease. They have even offered fake jobs, which people have to pay in order to get. They have also altered their swindles in order to match the scarcity in essential goods and an increase in online shopping. Some hackers even pretended to be the IRS and created fake companies just so they could claim government stimulus money. These scammers have sought out all possible avenues to take advantage of the desperation of people during this economic and public health crisis.

 

 

The strategies used by scammers have evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Federal Trade Commission got over 113,000 fraud reports that are related to stimulus or COVID-19, supposedly more than $150 million worth of financial losses. Based on the complaints made to the FTC, the most common source of the COVID-19 related fraud is online shopping. The other sources are travel or vacations, health care, mobile text messages, internet information services, telemarketing practices, and government imposters.

When it comes to the number of overall fraud complaint, pandemic related fraud accounts for 10% of the overall reports through the first six months of the year. This goes to show how quickly cybercriminals can change their methods just so they could take advantage of a certain situation.

Scam phone calls declined and there were more online scams after COVID-19 hit. Phone calls generally account for about 75% of all fraudulent attempts. But during the second quarter of this year, the number dropped to 48%. Meanwhile, email attempts saw an increase to 8% in 2019 to 23% in 2020. Furthermore, scams through website increased from 9% last year to 17% this year.

Managed IT services experts say that con artists targeted unemployed workers by posting fake job ads. Their primary objective is to get unsuspecting applicants to pay for supplies, equipment, and training. Text messages have become prevalent as well. One example is a fraudulent text claiming to be from Netflix and offering the recipient of the message five months of free service.

Avoiding Common COVID-19 Scams

1. Don’t fall for any product claiming to be the cure for COVID-19.
2. Before purchasing from an unfamiliar online shop, check the company first by doing a quick search online using its name and the words complaint or scam.
3. Filter out robocalls by screening the calls you receive.
4. Scammers may also pretend that they’re contact tracers. A real contact tracer will ask for your health information but fake ones only want to get our financial information.
5. You should also be careful of people who call you claiming that they are from IRS. Legitimate IRS employees will not call you regarding stimulus money.
6. If you have been a victim of a scam, do not be afraid or ashamed to report it.

Call SpartanTec, Inc. now and let our IT team help your company keep these scammers at bay while keeping your business safe from various online threats.

SpartanTec, Inc.
Wilmington, NC 28412
(910) 218-9255
http://manageditserviceswilmington.com

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence

What are the effects of phishing on business?

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In today’s modern time, companies need to have robust cybersecurity measures because they have become the primary targets of many criminals. Different attack methods are used but the easiest and most successful one to undertake is phishing.

Companies must be able to defend themselves against phishing and other types of online threats. In order to do that, you need to have a good understanding of how it works and how it affects your business.

What is phishing?

Phishing is a cyberattack that uses fraudulent websites and email to deceive individuals into downloading malware or giving away sensitive and confidential information, or both. It relies on the complacency and carelessness of people. A phishing attack is usually classified as a social attack or social engineering. Employees are being targeted by all sorts of phishing attacks everyday.

Phishing attacks continue to rise all over the world and they become more complicated. Even the largest firms in the world are not immune to such attacks and experience over 1,000 phishing attacks every month. Here are a few things you need to know.

• -       64% of companies have faced a phishing attack last year
• -       30% of messages used for phishing attacks were opened by targeted users
• -       32% of data breaches in the year 2018
• -       78% of cyberespionage incidents involved phishing
• -       51% of the phishing attacks had links to malware

How does phishing work?

Becoming a victim of a phishing campaign is easy. The “You have a FedEx package” is a good example. A person will get a message that appears to be from the legitimate email address of FedEx. In itself, the email is a customized message that instructs recipient to click on a link that says “package tracking,” but it will actually launch a malware. A lot of phishing attacks follow this same technique or pattern.

Spoofing is another method of phishing. In this hacking technique, there is a link in the email message that leads to a website that has been “spoofed.” The website is fraudulent as it is made to appear like the true website of a legitimate company. It will trick the careless or busy employee to key in the credentials into this spoofed website. When they enter the fake page, the phisher will then load the malware into the device of the user without the knowledge of the latter.

What are the costs?

Several data breaches have been caused by phishing attacks. A data breach costs an average of $3.86 million, as per the figures released by IBM. But these numbers alone is not enough to demonstrate the results of a phishing attack. So, here are a few things you need to know.

Reputation

Companies need trust in order to establish trust. The brand can be tarnished if it has been involved with a serious breach. It will greatly alter the brand’s perception into one that is unreliable for customers, partners, and employees. The foundation of the market capitalization of your company is your brand. Millions in market capitalization can be sabotaged because of the negative effects of a phishing attack.

Intellectual property

Intellectualproperty theft can be devastating. Phishing could compromise recipes, customer lists, research, formulas, and trade secrets. For companies in technology, food, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing, one patent or design that is stolen amounts to hundreds of millions in wasted research investment.

Direct Costs

The direct costs from phishing are well reported and documented. A 2018 Internet Crime report from the FBI said phishing as well as other types of email fraud come first in internet crimes in terms of the cost.

• -       BEC or business email compromise attacks has cost businesses in the United States more than $1.2 billion
• -       Gift card scams have cost the country $70 million
• -       Direct deposit phishing cost US companies more than $100 million

You also have to pay fines if your company suffers phishing attacks. You’ll have to pay to regulatory bodies like the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability. Checking the incident and giving compensation to victims whose data have been stolen can reach millions.

Call SpartanTec, Inc. and let us help you protect your business, staff, and clients from phishing attacks.

SpartanTec, Inc.
Wilmington, NC 28412
(910) 218-9255
http://manageditserviceswilmington.com

Cities Served:
Wilmington, Silver Lake, Sea Breeze, Carolina Beach, Eagle Island, Leland, Wrightsboro

Companies Lose An Average of $200,000 On Cyberattacks

Cybercrime is a type of criminal activity that’s becoming increasingly prevalent these days. What’s even more worrying is that cyberattacks are set to cost companies all over the world as much as $5.2 trillion in just five years.

Cybercriminals love to target small businesses and 43% of online attacks are aimed at them. The problem is a meager 14% of these firms have made the effort to protect themselves against such attacks. If you are a small business owner, you need to prioritize information security.

IT experts guarantee that every modern company’s state of the art perimeters will be breached eventually. Therefore, for small businesses, it’s no longer about if these security threats will happen but when they will take place.

To make things worse, the results of cyber attacks rise and such incidents now cost small businesses an average of $200,000. About 60% of the businesses that were breached have gone out of businesses six months after they were attacked.

The number of occurrences of these cyberattacks has gone up as well with over 50% having of the total number of small businesses suffered a breach within the past year. Plus, 4 out of 10 small companies having suffered multiple cyberattacks.

Even though this is already the case, 66% of the executives of small businesses still think they won’t be targeted by cyber criminals. Moreover, six out of ten don’t have any cyber defense plan of any kind, which means there’s a great need for improved education and industry awareness.

The damage that is brought upon a compromised company becomes worse because it usually takes about 101 days before company owners and business operators detect that they were hacked.

The costs that these compromised businesses need to cover can also pile up quickly. Aside from the attorney’s fees and other ancillary costs that you have to deal with, you will also be faced with the issue of losing customer confidence and loyalty as well as business relationships.

There are 30.2 million small businesses in the U.S. right now. If they wish to be protected from most, if not all types of online threats, they need to set in place a comprehensive IT security strategy.

• Make backups and duplicates of files and data every day.
• A network firewall, anti-virus, and tools for information encryption should be installed and updated regularly. They will scan and counteract harmful programs and viruses, and keep sensitive data safe and secure.
• Employees should only be given access to files, folders, and applications they need to use to do their job.
• Staffers must be trained regularly, every three months at least, and inform them of the latest cybercrime trends and online threats.
• Test the ability of your employees to detect scammers. You should also check how they respond to fraudulent requests.
• Perform tests for ongoing vulnerability and conduct risk assessments on installed applications and computer networks.
• Install cyber analytic tools that could scan user accounts, applications, networks to detect and halt any suspicious activity before they spread.

Why Companies Need Threat Intelligence?

Please remember that cyber threats may come from internal and external sources. With the increasing number of sensitive data that businesses handle these days, the best cyber defenses today are multipronged.

Call SpartanTec, Inc. and let our team of IT experts help you set up measures to protect your business from cybersecurity threats.

SpartanTec, Inc.
Wilmington, NC 28412
(910) 218-9255
https://spartantec-wilmingtonnc.business.site/

Cities Served:
Wilmington, Silver Lake, Sea Breeze, Carolina Beach, Eagle Island, Leland, Wrightsboro