Sunshine, Piña Coladas and various online scams

Ah, summer at last! This summer we encourage You to prepare not only by packing the sunscreen in your beach bag, but to educate your staff  - especially summer substitutes - on how to act when receiving emails of a questionable nature! This way you can relax with your Piña Colada by the beach, knowing your employees are equipped to handle what may come their way. 

Gone "phishing"

With summer comes not only vacations and nice weather - but also sun burn, mosquito bites, cyberattacks and various online scams. In the summertime, there are often less staff on site, some may be substitutes and they do not always have full knowledge of the routines and guidelines that normally apply. This is the time when the cyber criminals will strike, and they strike hard! How does your organization prepare for the summer scams?

Although summer is a time for many to relax by the lake, fishing and hoping to get the big catch, one of the most common forms of online fraud is so-called phishing - and it's a whole other type of "fishing"! Phishing, or password phishing, is an illegal way to trick someone into giving out credit card numbers, passwords or other sensitive and personal information. Often designed as an email, phishing attacks appears to come from a trusted sender and often contains suggestions to log in via a link to a fake website.

How to handle internet fraud

In order to protect your organization against phishing, it is important that you and your employees are aware of this particular method of fraud. We therefore encourage everyone to prepare before changing the office desk and coffee for the beach and Piña Coladas.

Here is a checklist to check off before you go on vacation, especially when it comes to phishing:

-  Ensure that the staff who will be on duty during the summer - substitutes and ordinary staff - are well acquainted with the company's safety routines. Train the staff continuously during the year so that everyone at the company has basic knowledge in IT security.

-  Never click on any links in emails that come from unknown email addresses, and never disclose any vital information via email. If in doubt about an email - ask a colleague for advice!

-  Teach your staff never give out login details, and never write them down on notes stored under the keyboard and so on! Use an easy to remember, but yet strong, password sentence instead, for example using the 4P method. 

-  If possible, perform a test before you go on vacation, to test your employees: send out a fake phishing email to see how the staff respond, and how many people in the company open it. It gives you a good indicator of how you are doing with security.

-  Last, but not least, do not connect the computer, tablet or mobile to insecure/public/free WiFi networks - for example on the train ride on a business trip or in a café for a business meeting. 

Now, have a great vacation, enjoy the summer sunshine and some free time in a safe way - and don't forget the sunscreen!