Protecting Your Sensitive Information from Fraudsters

Fetaured article by Ana Galic

The internet has become a busy place, people are spending more and more time online, especially now after the pandemic has forced us to spend more time inside. Everyone had to adapt to the “new world”, especially businesses that had to undergo digital transformation in order to be able to continue providing their services. We all had a lot of curve balls thrown at us, but as always, we managed to overcome them and even find the best in the bad situation. Can you imagine this happening 20 years ago when we were using dial up and nobody knew what a smartphone was? How would we survive any of this without high-speed internet and our trusted devices?

Unfortunately, the internet also has a few downsides, the most troublesome of them is cyber fraud. One of the most important duties of any business or organization is to make sure their customers and their sensitive information are safe and protected from cyber attacks. To protect from social attacks you need to know what you are fighting against.

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What are the most common cyber attacks affecting businesses?

There are many different types and even more subgroups of cyber attacks, but the ones that are most common for the business world are social engineering attacks. Social engineering attacks use psychological manipulation and deceit to gain access to sensitive data. The main goal of cyber criminals is to manipulate individuals to access their sensitive information like their login credentials, account details, intellectual property or any other confidential information they can get their hands on. They will often target employees and manipulate them into breaking standard security procedures.

The type of social engineering attack that causes the greatest damage to the business or organization is a phishing attack. With this attack fraudsters are pretending to be a trusted contact and they use that trust to get the user to give them confidential information. Would you question an email that looks like it came from your CEO that asks you to forward them account details? Did you know that 48.3% of remote employees have been the target of a phishing cybersecurity attack? Truth is that the highest risk for any security system will actually be human error. This is why it is extremely important that every business and organization implement all the security steps they need to protect their sensitive information.

How to protect your sensitive information from fraudsters

Cyber criminals will never stop attacking any business they think can bring them profit which is why it is up to every business and organization themselves to proactively handle any threats that might arise and to protect their sensitive information. Follow these five steps and keep your company and your customer safe.

1. Educate ALL employees 

It doesn’t matter which department the employee is working in, they all have access to some sensitive information. You need not only to conduct cybersecurity training with all of your employees regularly but also stay informed about any possible new threats. Don’t put your company in danger just because you thought that somebody’s position will never be targeted. Cyber criminals are smart and they will exploit any weaknesses. By creating clear and understandable security policies your employees will be more confident in dealing with cyber attacks.

2. Educate your users

Users can be as big a threat as your employees because they also handle sensitive data. You need to make them aware about what they can expect from you, for example in which case you will contact them and what data you will ask for when making that contact. Most importantly, you need to inform them which data you will never ask for. Your users want to stay safe, let them help you protect your business.

3. Create and enforce a strong password policy

This applies to your employees and your users. Educate everybody about the importance of updating and regularly changing passwords. If you allow your users to have weak passwords, you are making a job a lot easier for hackers. The only way to make it even easier would be if you just send them all the confidential details yourself.

4. Be sceptical

Don’t trust any email if you think it comes from a trusted source, always confirm the source no matter if it is email or a phone call. Question everything that looks suspicious.

5. Secure all devices that access your server. 

Make sure anti-virus andanti-malware software and firewalls are installed properly and update regularly.