Cyber attacks on businesses continue to increase, most based on social engineering, convincing employees to pay erroneous bills, compromise bank account numbers, or share protected client information. Many are so deceptive and convincing, even seasoned IT professionals can fall prey. Every business stores information on its clients, vendors, or employees and therefore can become a target.
Threats are broad, but recently the most successful attacks are social engineering scams. In such an assault, the thief doesn’t hide in the background of the network and skim information. Instead, they utilize bold ploys, skillfully pretending to be other parties such as vendors, managers, or bank employees, and provide fraudulent instructions or request sensitive information.
Nine-Fold Rise in Data Breaches
Beazley is a leader in cyber liability insurance and recently reported a nine-fold increase in data breaches from social engineering.
Below is an excerpt from their October 24th, 2017 press release:
Fraudsters use social engineering attacks to prey on employees’ roles in their companies in order to orchestrate the disclosure of sensitive information or the wire transfer of money to criminal recipients. These exploits generally take one of two forms. The first, W-2 scams, typically occur during the months leading to tax filing deadlines when criminals use targeted emails to persuade a specific company employee to forward copies of all the company’s employees’ W-2 forms. This often results in the criminals filing false tax returns, based on the improperly forwarded W-2 information, to claim refunds. The second category, fraudulent instruction, occurs when a fraudster impersonates a trusted party, such as a company executive or a payment system vendor, to cause a fraudulent payment, often a wire transfer, to be made into the fraudster’s account. Read Full Article
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Want to learn more? Reference our cyber liability insurance webpage for more information or to obtain a quote.
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