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Phishing Scams
Black Friday Cyber Crime Holiday Scam Holiday Season Holiday Shopping Phishing Scams

How to Stay Protect From Cybercrimes in This Holiday Season?


As the Christmas month is almost here, online consumers are increasingly turning to online shopping, making it also a festive season for threat actors to conduct cybercrime activities.

Because of the increase in e-commerce and the sizeable number of online buyers, fraudsters have access to a wider network of prospective victims. Thus, they have more opportunities to steal money as a result.

Peter Olyott, CEO of financial service company, Indwe Risk Services (Indwe) says, “Shoppers tend to be more relaxed during the festive season, making them more susceptible to overlooking suspicious online activity, and the abundance of special offers and deals during this period makes scams more believable,”

According to a report published by Interpol, online scams pose the most significant threat to consumers regarding cybercrime. They note that cybercrime activities tend to escalate over Black Friday and the holiday season. 

In order to mitigate the risk of cybercrime and stay secure, online users must know some of the common cybercrimes. Here, we are mentioning some of these common cybercrimes:

  • Fake Website: These are made to look like real brands, making it difficult to tell them apart from scammers. But frequently, they offer discounts and offers that seem too good to be true. Cybercriminals take advantage of the opportunity to steal critical information when unwary buyers click on these bargains and divulge their banking information.
  • Phishing Schemes: Phishing involves sending emails that trick recipients into downloading attachments, clicking on links, or creating accounts. Phishing emails can easily slip through the cracks this season due to the deluge of holiday-themed mailings.
  • Fake Gift Cards: These are an effective way for financial thieves to steal money. Gift card transactions are almost impossible to charge back, in contrast to credit card transactions. Scammers use a variety of strategies, including assuming the identity of trustworthy businesses and demanding payment in the form of gift cards, creating phoney gift card activation websites in order to obtain personal data, and posting phoney gift cards with discounts on websites belonging to other parties.

How to Stay Protected in this Black Friday? 

Here are some of the safety measures one can take to protect themselves in this holiday season:

  • Regularly check electronic statements and debit/credit card balances. 
  • Go with strong, unique passwords for different accounts. 
  • Set up two-factor authentication on all significant accounts, including social media, banking, and email.

“Given the increasing sophistication and escalation of cybercrime, we strongly encourage consumers to exercise caution while shopping online during the holiday season. By remaining alert for anything suspicious, you can protect yourself from falling victim to cybercrime, so you can enjoy a happy and safe festive season,” adds Olyott.  

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Technology
Automation Cyber Attacks Cybersecurity E-Commerce Holiday Scam Holiday Shopping Technology

Automation: Give Yourself the Gift of Secure Holiday E-Commerce


A brand-new year is on our way, and so are the tremendously awaited holidays. These holidays are for everyone, even a retail sector employee, for whom it is also the busiest time of the year. Nonetheless, this time offers ways to increase one's chances of a fun-loving and peaceful holiday with friends and/or family. 

The holiday season has just arrived, it is finally giving the overworked, and over-stressed cybersecurity engineers a chance to consider a break. 

But the holidays, unfortunately, would not deter the threat actors from lurking in the cyber world with their malicious intentions. We will be discussing some of the ways that could mute these malicious actors. 

One of the methods that work like a magic at times like these is Automation. If one would want to keep the tip of the scales in their favor for these holidays, he must cede the tasks of cybersecurity to the trustworthy good-bots. 

Here are some of the cybersecurity groundwork to set, in order to save holiday time for oneself.

Making Sure New Accounts Are on the Good List 

The creation of new accounts is probably going to increase during the holiday season for anyone who is not in B2B. New sign-ups are not exactly unusual, whether it is because people want to purchase something from your website or because they simply have more time to spare around the holidays. Additionally, there will be those taking advantage of the New Year's bargains and sales, using up their departmental budget from the previous year while they still can, and registering the warranties on gifted products. 

Unfortunately, this also indicates a perfect time for malicious actors to create illicit accounts, in order to evade detection in online traffic. In the medium to large enterprises that experience high volumes around this time, the sheer volume of new account creation prevents manually checking each one. 

Thus, many of the malicious bots choose this time of the year to create a large number of illicit accounts. Although, these accounts would most likely not do any harm, at least for a while. But one would not want these accounts to simply exist, sit around and develop since they can further be utilized for a variety of malicious cyber-activities and attacks. 

Thus, before setting oneself on holiday mode, one must make sure that the automated account validation services are operating properly. In order to keep the same in check, ensure to run some tests, ensure that the bots are being caught when making new accounts, and double checking the associated logging and reporting functions. 

Keeping Inventory Numbers Accurate for Santa

It takes a lot of effort and hard work in order to establish an inventory that would aid in surviving the holiday rush. But, this may as well go down the drain if some mean-spirited competitors or threat actors mess with the systems.  

But this is not uncommon for threat actors to execute such attacks on holidays as such. They make this happen by utilizing botnets that are capable of messing with the inventory via stockout, or denial-of-inventory attacks. These attacks include placing fraudulent orders and reserving them only to cancel once the holiday rush is over. 

Thus, it is advised to keep a check on the automation and detect any illicit stockout activities. Below are a few more tips before you sign off for the holiday season. 

  • It is advised to conduct an analysis of seasonal false positives from previous holidays, the week before the business closes for the holidays. Make sure to have a good concept of what those impressions look like if you anticipate being hit with false positives. One must accomplish this task before leaving for the year if he can develop more precise filters that will detect the evil folks but let them sleep in on Boxing Day.  
  • Since social media click frauds are rampant at this time of the year, one must make sure that their automation covers all the social media profiles, or it may lead to reputational damage before the social media could get a hold of it once the holidays are over. 

Cybersecurity would be the last thing to have in the back of the minds of people, and even cybersecurity officials, who are hurrying out of the workplaces at the end of the year. 

The solution is automation, for one can set up automated protections once and enjoy greater security permanently, it works as a fantastic stress reliever. Giving opportunity to people, to enjoy their holiday season in the best way.  

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Websites
Cyber Frauds Holiday Shopping Online Shopping Websites

Warning for Shoppers: Be Aware of Ransomware

 


With time, cyber attackers are getting updated and using more advanced technologies to steal data and blackmail the victims to get the ransom. One such case happened last year with Austin business Tiny Pies’ Instagram.

The co-founder of Tiny Pies in Austin, Amanda Wadsworth, commented on this incident and explained that they received a mail from an unknown source, and though it looked unauthorized, they clicked on it. After opening the mail, the cyber attackers hacked their system and locked their data. They coerced them to give ransom or else they will delete the account. 

Many cases showed that attackers threaten the victims for a ransom, or else they will leak confidential information on the dark web, where a large amount of such important information is already uploaded, as a consequence of cyber-attacks. 

Bobby Stempfley, the vice president and business unit security officer for Dell Technologies, commented on the rise in cyber-attacks. Dell also has to face many cyber-attacks on Dell. 

She stated that the organizations hold an “astronomical amount of data.” The organizations are managing data that is ten times more than the data that was there five years ago. 

She mentioned, “It is an environment where, when you put in better protections, the threat actors work to find better ways to go, work around those protections.” 

Considering the passion of cyber attackers to continuously find new ways to invade into target’s system and steal data, Stempfley started training employees of Dell to educate them about this ransomware and make them able to identify phishing and other attacks by ransomware. 

Alert for holiday shoppers 

The security company Tanium said that the cases of cyber-attacks are maximum during the holiday shopping season. Tanium added that hackers target when there is higher traffic on websites, such as on holidays, when people surf online more to find good deals. 

Melissa Bischoping, the endpoint security research director at Tanium, said that "security is not just the responsibility of the company storing your data, but it is also an equal responsibility of the shoppers to be alert and aware of such attacks." 

She explained, Shoppers should be cautious when they receive an email and first confirm whether it is legitimate or not. Prefer the trusted official app or the website instead of clicking on the links in emails with “a holiday sale” text. 

She talked about other holiday scams that are carried out using botnets. Cyber attackers collect items that are popularly in demand and add them to sell. Melissa said that the updated technology is working as a helping tool for cyber attackers to target the victims. 

To use the technology as a productive tool for your purpose instead of making it a weapon for hackers, you should follow some tips while shopping for sales online, such as: 

1. In case you receive an email for a shopping sale, do not click on it directly. Search for its authentication on websites or apps. 

2. Do not leave your credit card unchecked. Keep checking your credit card to know if there are any fraudulent charges. 

3. Create different passwords for different websites and apps where you shop from.
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