cyber threat Archives

What is spear phishing and how can my company avoid it?

The average person receives 16 malicious emails per month. A 2018 study of 500,000,000 emails found one out of every 101 emails received were malicious. Are your employees properly educated about this? Or will they click a link that could cost the company millions? Most of the time, the greatest risk to your company’s internet security are the people who work for it (including you). One click on a malicious email—even one that looks like it comes from a friend—could seriously damage your company. New employees are the most at risk for being duped. [1] What is Spear Phishing? Spear phishing is an attack in which hackers trick targeted users into sharing confidential information. It can also involve tricking the recipient into installing malware on their computer or network. Here is how it works: 1. You receive an email with an attachment from what looks like it originated from a ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:31+00:00

Email Phishing Becomes A Bigger & Bigger Threat

Phishing threat is no joke, despite the widows and princes. The phishermen are out there – just make sure you don’t get caught. Imagine: You come into work one morning and open a typical, innocuous-looking email. Unknown to you, that sets in motion a chain of events: Malicious code within the virus embeds itself within your laptop, forcing it to perform a series of hidden procedures that open gateways to your data, send spam emails to your contacts, and reproduce copies of the code. By lunchtime, several of your colleagues’ machines are doing the same thing. Twenty hours later, your entire network is infected, and all 70 employees are idled for two days! Can it happen? It happened recently to a Red Level client. By opening a single email, business ground came to a complete halt for two days, costing the company capital, revenue, and opportunity. Sadly, it’s something we ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:38+00:00

April Showers Brings May Security By Avoiding Attacks

The cyber security threat landscape is evolving, most companies’ solutions are not solving these attacks. Attackers are spending more than 287 days on average in companies they breach – and the amount of damage done in that time is astonishing. Three-quarters of those breaches are directly linked to the mismanagement or theft of user credentials. What is most alarming is that companies’ solutions cannot solve the problem. Expect breaches to happen, instead of struggling to protect your business from outside threats. So what can you do? Rely on detection and containment to best secure your environment. What if your employees need to access information from outside the office and often from their own devices? More importantly, how do you ensure that your data stays safe and out of the reach of likely attacks? One recommendation is to rate your mobility landscape. One question to ask yourself is, “How well am ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:38+00:00

Red Level’s Ed Baustert Attains Two Advanced Security Certifications = Better Security For You

“The threat landscape is always changing, and changing at a very rapid rate” For most companies, information security is a significant area of concern these days – and it ought to be. Hardly a week goes by without news of a new high-profile hack, data theft or intrusion striking a major enterprise, causing incredible damage to reputations and bottom lines. Meanwhile, the countless smaller companies being compromised, often with devastating results, seldom come to broader attention. The era of complacency about a network and data security is well beyond over: The abundance of sophisticated malware and the seeming freedom of powerful hacking groups has seen to that. Red Level believes that being anything less than high alert concerning security threats effectively invites intrusion; we strive for continuous improvement where security is concerned, adding new tools, tactics, and knowledge to help our clients mount an ideal defense. Recently, Red Level Help ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:40+00:00

PETYA RANSOMWARE: A New Threat To ‘Cry’ About – and a Simple Prevention Tip

It was only a month ago that I wrote in this space about the world’s lucky sidestep of the intended havoc mounted by the WannaCry ransomware attack. As our clients and regular readers of this site know, Red Level takes the ransomware menace very seriously: The damage and the expense such exploits cause is real and considerable, the potential negative impact they pose is increasing, and the exact nature of the threat is constantly changing. For IT professionals, WannaCry, Cryptolocker and their fellow travelers are a continual source of aggravation, unease, and extra work. We know we can’t afford to be complacent, even for a moment. That’s why we were unhappy, but unsurprised, to learn of the new problems caused by Petya, a ransomware variant currently wreaking havoc in Europe, Australia, and in at least one US hospital. Like WannaCry and Cryptolocker before it, Petya functions by unbreakably ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:44+00:00

CYBERCRIME: 9 Steps to Safeguard Your Organizations Data and Technology

There's a strong argument to be made that "Cybercrime" is more of a threat than a physical crime to most people and organizations. The more you think about the hypothesis, the more alarming it becomes. A physical crime typically depends upon the victim and the perpetrator (or group of perpetrators) being in the same place at the same time. That requirement doesn't hold true for individual hackers, sophisticated crime syndicates, foreign governments, or corporate espionage specialists. Vast underground networks of digital criminals trade information and conspire for purpose of sabotage, theft, and fraud, often working across borders that place them out of reach of law enforcement. For the past decade, security has consistently ranked as a top concern of CIOs. While other issues have come and gone, security has remained a vital issue because the capabilities and sophistication of cybercriminals have often outpaced the measures taken to protect against them. ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:01:55+00:00