With more Americans expected to do their holiday shopping online during the COVID-19 pandemic, US agencies and cybersecurity leaders are urging all consumers to be on alert for holiday shopping scams and cyber threats, which historically spike during the holiday season. Here, we talk to Michael Rezek, Vice President of Business Development and Cybersecurity Strategy at Accedian, about the technologies retailers need to adopt to ensure a smooth holiday shopping season, how to see the warning signs for bad actors, how to proactively manage them and what to do to prevent them in the first place.
Before the pandemic, buy online, pickup in store (BOPIS) became hugely popular to consumers who didn’t want to have to wait for items to be delivered, pay for shipping or for those that wanted to avoid shopping in store altogether. However, as retailers adopted BOPIS, its rise flipped a switch and increased opportunities for fraudsters, enabling them to use stolen credit card information to make purchases online and then simply arrive at the store to pick up the item. So what can retailers do to ensure their customers are staying safe? Here are a few things to consider:
Both organizations and consumers are evolving, becoming more digital, and requiring features that align with the current environment. As businesses are transforming digitally, consumers are surrounded by a plethora of applications and are using apps more than ever in daily life. Unfortunately, companies and individuals are at greater risk than ever because applications are among the top targets for threat actors.
When it comes to running an information security program, barriers to success are predictable. Many are obvious, such as a lack of budget and minimal buy-in, but others are not so clear and it’s often the small things that add up to create real security hurdles.
Healthcare is a vitally important industry, especially today. Sadly, healthcare organizations are frequently the targets of cyberattacks. This is especially important today because many of these attacks impede the ability of the organizations to offer care to their patients. The most severe attacks can even cause life-threatening situations.
One lesson that is underscored by the disruption of COVID and the resulting transformation of business operations is the importance of IT modernization. Here, we know that business leaders understand its significance, but we also see evidence that failing to embed security into the strategies and plans for IT modernization may be a difference-maker.
A cold reality in today’s enterprise is that ransomware is looming and threatening organizations constantly – like a lion behind the tall grass waiting patiently for its prey. It has unequivocally become the biggest threat to an enterprise alongside malware and phishing, even more so than a natural disaster or hardware failure, or a zero-day attack.
Companies, employees and consumers are under more pressure than ever to remain increasingly vigilant to social engineering attacks, phishing scams, malware and fraud.
Recent data from Risk Based Security revealed that the number of records exposed has increased to a staggering 36 billion in 2020. There were 2,935 publicly reported breaches in the first three quarters of 2020, with the three months of Q3 adding an additional 8.3 billion records to what was already the “worst year on record.” Here, we bring you our list of the top 10 data breaches of 2020.
Ransomware penetrates an organization’s IT infrastructure through phishing emails or endpoint vulnerabilities and then encrypts files, holding data hostage until a fee is paid to decrypt them. The FBI has deemed ransomware the fastest growing malware threat, causing significant revenue loss, business downtime and reputational damage. It’s critical organizations protect their data by following the best practices.