Highway robbers, Phishing and not so Romantic hotel locks

We are all at risk of online fraud pretty much on a daily basis and businesses, with governments, civil service and charities even more so.
 
Phishing is essentially a type of ‘social engineering’ where a message is specifically designed to fool the recipient and trick them into following a link or sharing information that is sensitive and hence valuable to the attacker; or to deploy malicious software on the victim's systems and infrastructure like ransomware. Consider it like modern day highway robbery.
 
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3 for short) says Phishing is the most common complaint accounting for one third of all reports to the IC3. In the UK phishing increased 70% in the first year of the pandemic, according to a recent study from the Interisle Consulting Group.
 
So what is to be done?
 
We all clearly have a role to play as we'll all be highj-acked at some stage:

Photo courtesy of Unplash

Recently Robin Mohan at Avacote reported about a hotel chain who made the mistake of raising their ‘head above the parapet’….and saying no one would want to hack them as there was nothing of value …….!
 
The business was a small hotel in Austria called The Romantik Seehotel Jaegerwirt, that had no defences in place because they openly admitted to the BBC that they didn't believe that a hotel in the Austrian mountains had anything of value for a hacker!
 
When the hackers broke into the hotel they messed with the hotel room keycards, stole their client data and demanded a bitcoin ransom. The hotel did not know what to do so on all 4 occasions decided to pay the ransom. Worse for the hotel, their much coveted 5 star rating nose dived. 
 
Early warning signs of impending phishing attacks include the registration of misleading domain names for fake websites. Fifty-seven percent of domains used for phishing were employed for ill effect within two weeks of initial registration, with more than half were used within the first 48 hours !! Speed is of the essence.
 
Solutions therefore include identifying misleading domain registrations proactively and shutting them down before a malicious attack can be launched; www.baways.com was registered several weeks before the BA data breach.
 
This requires a good domain watching service like Lexdech and others.
 
Keeping a brand safe online is a multifaceted activity but as phishing is one of the major threats identifying new domain name registrations early can make a big difference to consumer safety and brand equity.  
 
Lexdech helps law firms identify new domain registrations to prevent the unauthorized use of brands intellectual property.

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We Can Help You, so call +44203  911 5539 for a Confidential Free Initial Chat and Demlo or check www.Lexdech.com for more information.  
 
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