Phishing and spear phishing attacks against businesses have reached an all-time high. Business owners and managers need to be aware of the risks, in particular with regard to email account takeover attacks. Professional remote monitoring by Greater Boston managed service providers can employ a wide range of protective measures to keep your essential data safe. Disaster recovery service programs offer backups and methods used to get businesses back up and running quickly after a serious attack. Instead of losing days or weeks of business, you can be up in minutes or hours at the most.
What Are Email Account Takeover Attacks?
You might not be familiar with the term, but email account takeover attacks are a technique used by hackers to gain entry to a business account. Once they are inside, they send out lateral phishing emails. The gist is that because these emails appear to come from a legitimate account, either from a co-worker, boss, or colleague, they are much more likely to fool the victims and cause them to click on links or download malicious files. If you have been a victim to one of these attacks, you are not alone. Studies reveal that one in seven organizations in the United States has experienced some degree of lateral phishing attacks. A large percentage of this affected experienced multiple incidents, somewhere around 60 percent.
While some forms of phishing attacks are no longer effective for hackers because of employee education and professional remote monitoring services, lateral phishing attacks are more successful because of their nature. One study showed that more than 10 percent of those attacked resulted in additional compromised employee accounts. What’s more worrisome is that more than 40 percent of those who were attacked never bothered to report the incidents to the IT or network security team. Once the initial account is compromised, more than 55 percent of the attackers will target victims who have either a personal or work relationship to the person that they hijacked. While most attacks use generic messages, others get more creative and tailor their message to the particular victim or organization.
What Can You Do?
Greater Boston managed service providers like Synivate can offer assistance to companies of all sizes who are concerned about email account takeover attacks and other types of phishing incidents. Our professional remote monitoring services and disaster recovery service programs are designed to prevent, stop, and recover from attacks quickly. However, education and support are also vital in helping employees be more alert and more willing to report incidents that occur. Instead of hiding or ignoring what has happened, as so many have already done, employees should be encouraged to report any type of incident without fear of being blamed or experiencing repercussions.
Security awareness training is essential. Our team of highly trained technicians and network security experts can provide you and your employees with lessons on how to identify phishing, lateral phishing, and email account takeover attacks. We can teach your team skills on how to carefully check over the URL and destination of any link that they receive in an email before clicking on it. Advanced detection techniques for lateral phishing attacks are essential, as they can be tough to identify. In addition, our team can provide you with advanced professional remote monitoring services to increase security for your essential company data and employee information.
Prepare and Protect
Synivate can create innovative technology solutions to help your business prepare for attacks and protect essential company data during an attack. Our disaster recovery service will help you get back on track, so you don’t miss a beat and ensure that you are protected from future attacks. Email account takeover attacks are growing in popularity, so the sooner you can commit to providing your business with professional remote monitoring services and network security, the better. While you might not be able to prevent all cyber attacks, through the power of education, training, and monitoring services, an attack does not have to ruin your business.
Protect what matters most. If you are interested in learning more about network security solutions from reputable Boston managed service providers, contact Synivate by calling 617-517-0704. Our technicians can answer any questions that you might have about professional remote monitoring, disaster recovery service, and any of the other professional services that we provide. You can also visit our website and take a FREE 10-minute IT Assessment to determine the areas that you need services for the most.