Cybersecurity Awareness Month

Check out this entertaining YouTube video in honor of Cyber Security Month. Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer, gets his revenge on Scammers using smoke bombs and cockroach-release boxes to go after four call centers in India. These centers scam older people out of their life savings. Take that, Scammers!!

Digital forms of crime seem to be happening more often than not these days. How are you preparing for these acts of misconduct? October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. TrioTel hopes customers use this month to prepare on what to look out for, how to prevent cyber-attacks from happening, and what to do if you fall victim to digital crime.

Online Safety

Always Enable Multi-Factor Authentication

Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) is an authentication method that requires the user to provide two or more verification factors to gain access to a resource such as an application, online account, or a VPN.

The goal of MFA is to create a layered defense that makes it more difficult for an unauthorized person to access a target, such as a physical location, computing device, network or database. If one factor is compromised or broken, the attacker still has at least one or more barriers to breach before successfully breaking into the target.

MFA can include

• A extra PIN (personal identification number)
• The answer to an extra security question like, “What’s your favorite pet’s name?”
• An additional code either emailed to an account or texted to a mobile number
• A biometric identifier like facial recognition or a fingerprint
• A unique number generated by an “Authenticator App” 
• A secure token, which is a separate piece of hardware (like a key fob that holds information) that verifies a person’s identity with a database or system

What type of accounts offer MFA?

Not every account offers MFA, but it’s becoming more popular every day. It’s seen on many accounts that usually hold either valuable financial or personal information like banks, financial institutions, online stores, or social media platforms. Any place online that is storing your personal information (especially financial information), or any account that can be compromised and used to trick or defraud someone else should be protected with MFA. So, basically everything. Simply put, use MFA everywhere!

Recognize Phishing

“Cybercriminals like to go phishing, but you don’t have to take the bait.”
Phishing is a cyber crime that leverages deceptive emails, websites, and text messages to steal confidential personal and corporate information. Victims are tricked into giving up personal information such as their credit card data, phone number, mailing address, company information, etc.

No need to fear your inbox, though. Fortunately, it’s easy to avoid a scam email, but only once you know what to look for. With some knowledge, you can outsmart the phishers every day. 

See it so you don’t click it

Once you can recognize a phishing attempt, you can avoid falling for it. Before clicking any links or downloading attachments, take some time and ensure the email looks legit. Here are some quick tips on how to clearly spot a phishing email: 

• Does it contain an offer that’s too good to be true?  
• Does it include language that’s urgent, alarming, or threatening?  
• Is it poorly crafted writing riddled with misspellings and bad grammar? 
• Is the greeting ambiguous or very generic?  
• Does it include requests to send personal information? 
• Does it stress an urgency to click on an unfamiliar hyperlinks or attachment? 
• Is it a strange or abrupt business request? 
• Does the sender’s e-mail address match the company it’s coming from? Look for little misspellings like pavpal.com or anazon.com

See a Phishing Email?

The hard part is recognizing that an email is fake and part of a criminal’s phishing expedition. If a Phishing email came to your work email, report it to your IT manager or security officer as quickly as possible.  

If the email came to your personal email address, don’t do what it says. Do not click on any links (even the unsubscribe link) or reply back to the email. Remember, DON’T CLICK ON LINKS, JUST DELETE. You can take your protection a step further and block the sending address from your email. 

Theft, Fraud + Cybercrime

Check out these staysafeonline.org quick-reads that touch base on all sorts of cybersecurity tips and tricks!

Resources: https://staysafeonline.org/programs/cybersecurity-awareness-month/