Scams are a scary prospect, and with today’s technology and current events being what they are, it’s all the more important that you remain aware of them so you can avoid them. With a whole year ahead of us, let’s consider some scams and scam-based trends that will likely continue throughout.

Every organization needs to have a certain level of cybersecurity protection in place. That includes firewalls, antivirus, VPNs, encryption, and centrally managed security policies. Even so, many modern cybercriminals know that businesses have these protections in place, and they are working out ways around them.

I recently engaged in a discussion with some of my colleagues about the intersection of cybersecurity and the scams that so many of us deal with every day, like those annoying phone scams. We wound up concluding that it's valuable to examine these phenomena together.

So, let’s do that.

Phishing attacks are the most common attack vector used by hackers, and while it helps to know what a phishing attack looks like, it’s also good to know what they don’t look like. The latest example of a phishing attack takes this to an extreme, utilizing blank messages to confuse recipients in a creative take on phishing attacks.

Spam is annoying. It’s so annoying that the majority of us have just learned to accept it and tune it out. We all get physical junk mail that just gets tossed in the trash, we get bizarre text messages that we just automatically ignore, our phones ring with telemarketers and scammers. We’re so used to it, and most people feel so confident in their abilities to ignore it, that we don’t stop and ask ourselves, “Why the heck is spam still a thing?”

It’s because people DO fall for it. Spam works…and when it does, it can be devastating.

One of the more overlooked parts of cybersecurity attacks involves social media and social engineering tactics targeting it. If you’re not careful, you could be putting yourself at risk of attacks through social media. How can you ensure that your staff members are keeping security at top of mind even when using social media? Let’s find out.

Let’s begin with a cold, hard fact—if a business has been targeted by cybercrime from an outside source, there is a 68 percent chance that another attempt to access their network will come within one year. This statistic comes from Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity solutions provider. Despite this reality, there seems to be a perception that there’s some unwritten rule somewhere that a company can only be attacked once. 

We’re all familiar to some degree with the security measure known as CAPTCHA. You know the one—you usually see it when filling out forms or logging into sites online, where you have to prove that you’re a human being by identifying which of a variety of images fit a certain description. You may have noticed that these tests have gotten far more difficult over time. This is because, predictably, computers are getting better at beating them.

Being a small business doesn’t make you invisible to criminals on the Internet. You might think that being a smaller entity, serving only a local area, might not drive a lot of malicious attention to you, but it just isn’t the case today.

We have been observing a significant rise in reported phishing attacks from clients, prospects, and local businesses throughout Maryland. In fact, we’re not just seeing this happen in the larger cities, but the smaller, more rural areas as well.

We’ve all caught the obvious spam email, like the message that is clearly bogus, or the offer that is definitely too good to be true.

We’re going to confidently assume none of our readers are getting tricked by Nigerian Princes or getting roped into order virility drugs from an unsolicited email. The real threat comes from the more clever phishing attacks. Let’s take a look.

As nice as it would be to always please everybody with your business services, it just isn’t going to happen. Sooner or later, you’re going to encounter someone who isn’t pleased, and they’re going to have the capability to do some damage to your reputation. Fortunately, there is a way you can mitigate this damage.

While many of us rely on phones to remain productive during the day, too often are we now picking up the phone to a spammer’s snake-oil sale: “Hello, we are reaching out to inform you that there has been an issue with your account” or similar nonsense. While this is enough of an irritant in our daily lives, it isn’t as though a business can wait for a call to go to voicemail to find out if it was legitimate or not.