Over the holiday break we have seen an increase in the number of social engineering attacks (also known as phishing, spear-phishing, whaling or scareware) across both our client base, and the wider business community.
These attacks differ from typical virus or malware attacks, in that they attempt to deceive the target into voluntarily installing some malicious software (such as key stroke loggers) or voluntarily providing account credentials and password for banking or email logins. Human behaviour is often the weakest link in any line of defence, and these attacks rely on the exploitation of human psychology and curiosity to achieve their desired end goal of stealing from your business or users.
Because there is no attempt to infect the target with any malicious software, traditional anti-virus and end-point protection solutions will rarely block these types of attacks – as they simply consist of a text based email with a link to a web page. This link will generally appear on the surface as a legitimate site, but is in fact a fraudulent attempt to get targets to either install malicious software or provide sensitive user names and passwords. If successful, there are often disastrous consequences. These attacks are becoming increasingly more sophisticated and difficult to spot, but there are generally some tell-tale signs if users follow a few simple checks.
In order to protect our clients as best we can from these types of attacks, we have bundled and discounted 2 solutions to help prevent social engineering attacks:
- Our Security Awareness Management platform, to ensure your staff are well equipped to spot phishing attempts, and;
- Defenz – our DNS filtering solution which will prevent users who do fall for these attacks from accessing known fraudulent sites.
You can protect your users and business with these two solutions from as little as 12 cents a day per person. If you’re already using one of these solutions, you’ll receive a discount by adding the 2nd element.
If you’d like to find out more about how these 2 solutions can improve your overall security profile, please call our sales team on 04 499 4999 or contact your account manager directly. In the meantime, please take measure to ensure your staff are on high alert for these types of attacks. And please feel free to download our free guide to social engineering attacks and how to avoid them, by clicking on the following link (don’t worry, this is not a test!)
https://silicon.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Silicon_Guide_to_Social_Engineering_Attacks.pdf