I had a tremendous opportunity this week to moderate and co present with an FBI special agent regarding the latest attack trends against SMB (Small and Medium Sized Businesses). Our audience was informed on the types of tactics and approaches being leveraged by cyber criminals, hacktivists as well as nation-state actors against SMB’s. The cadence and level of sophistication in which these attacks are happening are very concerning and the data the FBI shared coincides with the trends and research we see at Trend Micro. This is very alarming considering that SMB’s are often considered the primary engine for growing the economy in the US.
Our talk focused heavily on distilling the technical complexities associated with cybersecurity and technology in general. The FBI special agent did a fantastic job of orchestrating the talk in a fashion that all users could understand the content as well as the gravity of the situation. He outlined that attacks will continue to mount against SMB’s and countermeasures are needed.
As more and more businesses leverage social media to increase awareness and market their goods and services, cybercriminals will be one step ahead. They are already using the social media platforms to wage attacks against individuals in Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. In fact, compromised Facebook and Gmail accounts were the topic of conversation this week. It is estimated that more than 2 million accounts were found stored on servers in the Netherlands. It’s safe to assume that many small business owners and their respective PC’s were part of this particular campaign. This most likely was due to the clicking on malicious links in a spam campaign that resulted in malware being installed that would gather keystrokes and credentials used for accessing these accounts. It’s also safe to assume that other key credentials such as banking and/or financial information was also compromised as a result of this malicious effort.
In the end, we discussed that an “ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Ultimately within the realms of technology, that means taking the time to deploy basic security countermeasures on all your devices accessing the public Internet. Make sure to install leading anti-malware packages and keep your applications and operating system up to date with the latest patches. This not only helps you with new features and functionality but also helps you with the security of your systems to prevent a compromise on your personal or business PC’s in which you use to conduct commerce in your respective small and medium-sized business.
