2024 Phishing Stats and Trends

Phishing attacks continue to pose a significant threat in the digital landscape, with mobile devices becoming increasingly vulnerable. A recent study by Zimperium reveals alarming trends in phishing tactics and their rapid evolution.

Key Findings

HTTPS Adoption

1% of phishing URLs now use HTTPS, creating a false sense of security for users.
60% of newly created phishing domains obtain SSL certificates within the first 2 hours of registration.

Zero-Day Vulnerabilities

50% of phishing sites remain undetected for over a week, operating as zero-day threats.
About 25% of phishing domains are reported within a day of creation, highlighting the need for advanced detection technologies.

Multi-Target Attacks

On average, phishing domains host approximately four distinct fraudulent sites, targeting multiple brands simultaneously.
Attackers often target related brands or those in the same geographic region.

Implications for Cybersecurity

The rapid deployment and sophistication of phishing attacks underscore the importance of robust, real-time protection measures. Organizations must prioritize advanced zero-day detection technologies and comprehensive mobile security solutions to safeguard against these evolving threats.

By staying informed about these trends and implementing proactive security measures, businesses can better protect their sensitive data and maintain their brand reputation in an increasingly complex digital landscape.

Source: https://www.zimperium.com/blog/deep-dive-into-phishing-chronology-threats-and-trends/

Netskope Threat Labs has reported a significant increase in phishing attacks using Microsoft Sway, a free presentation tool within Microsoft 365. In July 2024, they observed a 2,000-fold rise in traffic to phishing pages delivered through this platform.

Key Findings

Quishing Attacks: Many of these phishing campaigns employed “Quishing,” a technique that uses QR codes to direct users to malicious websites. This method is particularly effective as it often bypasses email scanners and exploits users’ familiarity with QR codes.
Target and Scope: The attacks primarily targeted Microsoft Office credentials, affecting victims in Asia and North America across various sectors, with Technology, Manufacturing, and Finance being the most impacted.

Sophisticated Techniques:

Attackers used Cloudflare Turnstile to hide phishing content from static scanners.
Transparent phishing was employed to collect user credentials and potentially bypass multi-factor authentication.

Importance of Security Awareness Training

In light of these sophisticated phishing tactics, organizations must prioritize security awareness training for their employees. Regular training sessions can help staff:

Recognize suspicious QR codes and links.
Understand the risks of using personal devices for work-related tasks.
Practice proper URL verification before entering credentials.

At YYTECH, we understand the evolving nature of cyber threats and the importance of a robust defense strategy. Contact us to learn how we can help your organization with security awareness training and other cybersecurity solutions.

Source: https://www.netskope.com/blog/phishing-in-style-microsoft-sway-abused-to-deliver-quishing-attacks

Microsoft Edge’s latest innovation, ‘Draft with Copilot,’ is set to revolutionize content creation in the browser. This AI-powered feature aims to streamline text generation for various purposes, from emails to social media posts.

How It Works

When encountering an empty text field in Edge, users can access ‘Draft with Copilot’ through a simple right-click. A pop-up window allows you to input your desired topic, and with a click of the ‘Generate’ button, Copilot produces text on the specified subject.

Customization Options

The generated content isn’t set in stone. Users can adjust the tone and length to better suit their needs, whether it’s a formal business communication or a casual social media update.

Benefits

‘Draft with Copilot’ offers several advantages:

Time-saving: It can significantly reduce the time spent on routine writing tasks.
Grammar and structure: The tool ensures grammatically correct and well-structured text.
Language assistance: It’s particularly helpful for those writing in non-native languages.

Current Limitations

At present, the feature is only available in U.S. English, though Microsoft plans to expand language support. It’s also worth noting that the tool is still in the Edge Canary preview build, indicating ongoing refinement.

Considerations

While ‘Draft with Copilot’ offers impressive capabilities, reviewing and personalizing the generated content is crucial. Some critics argue that AI-generated text can sometimes lack uniqueness or feel generic.

Future Outlook

Microsoft’s integration of Copilot into various Windows applications suggests a trend towards more AI-assisted features in our digital ecosystem. This development points to a future where AI tools become increasingly accessible and versatile across different platforms.

Not tried Copilot in your business yet? We can help you get started. Get in touch.

Phishing attacks have evolved significantly, with a 350% year-over-year increase in file-sharing phishing incidents according to a new report from Abnormal Security. These attacks exploit legitimate business tools, making them difficult to detect. Cybercriminals use platforms like Dropbox and DocuSign to send emails that appear genuine, tricking employees into revealing sensitive information or downloading malware.

Business Email Compromise (BEC) and Vendor Email Compromise (VEC)

BEC and VEC attacks remain persistent threats, growing by over 50% between H2 2023 and H1 2024. These attacks use social engineering to bypass traditional security measures, posing significant risks to businesses.

File-Sharing Phishing Attacks

File-sharing phishing attacks are particularly malicious because they mimic common business practices. Attackers impersonate trusted contacts or services, sending emails that appear to contain shared files. Once the recipient clicks the link, they may be prompted to enter credentials or download malware. Using legitimate platforms for these attacks increases their credibility and success rate.

Techniques and Tactics

Impersonation and Social Engineering: Attackers use generative AI tools to craft emails with perfect grammar and syntax, making them indistinguishable from legitimate messages.
Use of Legitimate Platforms: By leveraging platforms that offer free registration, attackers can send emails that appear authentic, further complicating detection.
Evasive Techniques: Cybercriminals use URL shorteners and open redirect vulnerabilities to mask malicious links, making them harder to detect by traditional security solutions.

Impact on Businesses

The rise of remote and hybrid work environments has increased the use of file-sharing services, providing more opportunities for attackers. The volume of these attacks is expected to continue growing as cybercriminals capitalize on these changes in work habits.

Businesses need to adopt advanced cybersecurity solutions to protect against these sophisticated threats. Yeo & Yeo Technology can help by providing comprehensive cybersecurity services tailored to your organization’s needs. Our solutions are designed to detect and mitigate the latest phishing threats, ensuring your business remains secure in an increasingly digital world.

Information used in this article was provided by our partners at KnowBe4.

In today’s fast-paced technology landscape, mid-sized businesses encounter numerous IT challenges, from maintaining a competitive edge to safeguarding compliance and controlling costs. The critical question arises: should IT be managed in-house, outsourced, or co-sourced with a Managed Services Provider (MSP)? According to Gartner, 70% of organizations will utilize some form of managed services by 2025, highlighting the increasing reliance on MSPs to navigate these complex waters.

The Strategic Value of Co-Sourcing with MSPs

Co-sourcing with MSPs offers a balanced approach, where MSPs either augment internal IT teams or handle specific functions like cybersecurity operations, cloud cost management, and end-user support. This hybrid strategy allows businesses to access specialized expertise while maintaining control over core IT functions. Forrester reports that companies leveraging MSPs experience a 30% reduction in IT costs and a 50% improvement in operational efficiency. By leveraging MSPs, businesses can drive growth, help ensure compliance, reduce costs, and mitigate risks, ultimately thriving in a competitive market.

Business and IT Alignment: The Foundation of Success

The relationship between a business and an MSP should extend beyond technical support; it must be grounded in a deep understanding of the business’s strategic objectives. Like finding a rare gem, discovering an MSP that truly grasps your business needs is invaluable. An effective MSP seamlessly integrates with your business strategy, offering insights that fuel growth and innovation. This alignment ensures that IT initiatives are not merely operational necessities but are integral to achieving long-term business goals.

Comprehensive Support: Beyond the Basics

In IT, challenges are rarely straightforward. The right MSP offers a broad spectrum of services, from proactive monitoring and maintenance to strategic consulting. This comprehensive support enables businesses to anticipate issues and leverage technology for a competitive advantage. In an ever-evolving technological landscape, having an MSP with both depth and breadth of expertise is crucial, encompassing areas like application development, business applications, ERP systems, cybersecurity, forensics, audit, data analytics, AI, and automation.

Change Management: Preparing for the Unforeseen

Change is a constant in IT, often presenting itself as new technologies or system upgrades. A robust change management strategy is crucial for smooth transitions and maximizing user adoption. This involves comprehensive training, clear communication, and ongoing support to navigate the complexities of new systems. An MSP with a strong change management framework helps businesses avoid the pitfalls of poorly managed transitions and ensures that new technologies are seamlessly integrated into daily operations.

Agility and Future-Proofing: Staying Ahead of the Curve

The business world is in constant flux, and the ability to adapt swiftly is a significant competitive advantage. Just as organizations must be prepared for both predictable and unpredictable events, choosing an MSP with agility and a forward-thinking approach is essential. The right MSP not only addresses current needs but also anticipates future challenges and opportunities. This includes staying informed about emerging technologies like AI, cloud computing, and advanced cybersecurity, ensuring your business is equipped for a secure future.

The Strategic Advantages of MSPs

Engaging an MSP offers numerous strategic benefits, particularly for mid-sized businesses that may lack the resources to maintain a comprehensive in-house IT team. These benefits include:

Cost Efficiency: MSPs provide predictable costs, reducing the financial burden of maintaining an in-house IT team. Companies leveraging MSPs can achieve significant cost reductions.
Enhanced Security: With specialized cybersecurity expertise, MSPs offer robust protection against evolving threats, a necessity in today’s digital landscape.
Access to Specializations: MSPs bring extensive knowledge across various IT domains, essential for staying competitive in a rapidly evolving tech landscape.
Scalability: MSPs offer flexible services that can scale with changing business needs and market demands.
Proactive Support: Continuous monitoring and maintenance prevent issues before they arise, minimizing downtime and ensuring smooth operations.

Leveraging AI and Advanced Security

The rise of AI and advanced security threats is transforming businesses across all sectors. MSPs play a critical role in integrating AI and supporting AI deployments, enabling businesses to harness these technologies effectively. Gartner predicts that by 2024, a significant shift towards operationalizing AI will occur, increasing the need for advanced infrastructure and expertise. MSPs can guide businesses through this transition, ensuring seamless and secure technology integration.

A Future-Ready Approach

As businesses face sophisticated security threats and rapid AI adoption, having a broad range of skills in your MSP is crucial. Yeo & Yeo Technology (YYTECH) provides robust cybersecurity solutions, supports AI deployments, and leverages data analytics for informed decision-making. With the world increasingly reliant on digital transformation, YYTECH is ready to support your business at the forefront of innovation. YYTECH is more than just an MSP; we are committed to your success. Our comprehensive suite of services and deep industry expertise uniquely position us to support your business in achieving its strategic goals. Trust YYTECH to help navigate the complexities of the digital landscape and help secure your business’s future.

Technology has made seemingly everything fast, convenient and easily accessible. This is certainly true of quick response (QR) codes, those ubiquitous symbols you can find on everything from restaurant menus to product packages to advertisements. When you scan QR codes with a smartphone, you can access prices, instructions, product information and even payment apps.

But as with most technologies, fraud perpetrators have found ways to exploit QR codes — and steal from consumers and businesses. Here’s what you need to know.

How thieves use them

Last year, the FBI issued an alert about QR code tampering. Fraudsters replace or alter QR codes so that users are directed to malicious websites or inadvertently download malware onto their devices. Such schemes enable fraudsters to access victims’ account usernames and passwords and personal and financial information.

Unfortunately, it’s very easy for criminals to create QR codes using online tools. They replace the codes of legitimate businesses with their own by, for example, placing stickers over existing codes. Such stickers have been found on menus, parking meters, signs in front of businesses and packaging of all kinds. Fraudsters might also include them in phishing emails or printed advertisements, coupons or surveys sent through the U.S. Post Office.

Foiling schemes

Preventing QR fraud is similar in many ways to foiling phishing schemes. When you’re directed to a website, scrutinize it for authenticity. Fraudulent sites often look amateurish and feature misspellings and typos. The site’s name may be similar — but not quite the same — as the site you intended to visit. If you’re suspicious, don’t type in a username, password or payment information. Leave the site immediately.

Other ways to avoid QR code traps are to:

Inspect physical objects for stickers or other signs the original QR codes have been replaced.
Be careful about scanning any QR code included in an email. Try to verify the authenticity of the email first.
Use only your phone’s camera to scan codes. You shouldn’t download a QR code app.
Don’t make payments via QR codes. Go directly to the website by typing in the URL and only use payment processing systems that encrypt your information with SSL or TLS protocols.

Businesses can help protect themselves by routinely checking online and physical sites where they’ve placed QR codes for signs of tampering. Include a message with your QR code telling customers that they should notify you if scanning your code takes them to a suspicious site.

Be on guard

Not even QR codes are safe from fraud perpetrators. As with all types of fraud, your best defense is a good offense. Look closely at QR codes before you scan them and scrutinize the sites they lead to.

The latest data from Dark Reading’s annual Strategic Security Survey shows phishing continues to be an organization’s biggest problem. With 53% of organizations citing phishing as the cause of a security breach, organizations are keenly aware of the problem when mixing users, social engineering and phishing emails.

According to the survey:

58% say users being socially engineered via phishing or other scams is the most significant endpoint security concern.
48% of respondents say that if their organization experiences a major data breach in the next 12 months, the most likely cause will be a negligent end user.

So, users are the weak link in the security chain in most organizations. This requires some shoring up of security efforts around users, including Security Awareness Training to turn the user from a security liability to an asset who aids in protecting the organization.

According to the survey of those organizations that experienced a cybersecurity breach in the last 12 months:

23% reported network disruptions and application unavailability.
17% say they experienced a major financial loss.
15% reported fraud.

Phishing and the user have been proven to be an effective initial attack vector. And with the potential damage an attack can have, it’s imperative to strengthen every part of your security stance – including the user.

Learn more about the importance of Security Awareness Training.

Information used in this article was provided by our partners at KnowBe4.

Having a robust customer relationship management (CRM) system has proven valuable to companies as they navigate the changing sales landscape. During the pandemic, route sales and customer visits were put on hold. Now that we are turning the corner, tools to assist with the transition back to route sales and outside sales will play a key role.

Making sales more efficient with maps and CRM software

Integrating a mapping application, like Google Maps, with your CRM system provides powerful efficiencies. We all know how amazing the Google Maps data is, especially when you can zoom in to street level on any business in the world. Now is the time to leverage that information.

Integrating maps with CRM allows you to display customer or prospect companies as pinpoints on a map. Pinpoint colors can also be customized based on the type of company (customer, prospect, etc).

Clicking pinpoints provides you with additional CRM-related information on that company (status, primary contact, industry segment, last invoice date, etc).

What are the benefits?

If your company has route or territory sales processes in place, then seeing those records on a map can be a great tool for the route salesperson. The salesperson targets a few key accounts on their trip and schedules visits with those accounts. With a map interface, the salesperson can quickly and strategically fill in the gaps between those appointments by selecting companies from the map.

Some map applications will allow you to create pre-defined routes that include multiple days with designated stops for each day. You can give these routes names and then reuse or clone when you visit that route again in a few months. Some applications even let you add all of those stops to your calendar with a single click!

In a nutshell, the ability to visualize the CRM records on a map gives the sales team a unique and more efficient perspective on how they should call on their accounts and in what order.

Ready to get started?

Our Sage CRM solution can integrate seamlessly with Google Maps. Contact Yeo & Yeo Technology today to learn more.

Information used in this article was provided by our partners at Sage.

In one recent cybercrime scheme, a mortgage company employee accessed his employer’s records without authorization, then used stolen customer lists to start his own mortgage business. The perpetrator hacked the protected records by sending an email containing malware to a coworker.

This particular dishonest worker was caught. But your company may not be so lucky. One of your employees’ cybercrime schemes could end in financial losses or competitive disadvantages due to corporate espionage.

Best practices

Why would trusted employees steal from the hand that feeds them? They could be working for a competitor or seeking revenge for perceived wrongs. Sometimes coercion by a third party or the need to pay gambling or addiction-related debts comes into play.

Although there are no guarantees that you’ll be able to foil every hacking scheme, your business can minimize the risk of insider theft by implementing several best practices:

Restrict IT use. Your IT personnel should take proactive measures to restrict or monitor employee use of email accounts, websites, peer-to-peer networking, Instant Messaging protocols and File Transfer Protocol.

Remove access. When employees leave the company, immediately remove them from all access lists and ask them to return their means of access to secure accounts. Provide them with copies of any signed confidentiality agreements as a reminder of their legal responsibilities for maintaining data confidentiality.

Don’t neglect physical assets. Some data thefts occur the old-fashioned way — with employees absconding with materials after hours or while no one is looking. Typically, a crooked employee will print or photocopy documents and remove them from the workplace hidden in a briefcase or bag. Some dishonest employees remove files from cabinets, desks or other storage locations. Controls such as locks, surveillance cameras and restrictions to access can help prevent and deter theft.

Treat workers well. Create a positive work environment and treat employees fairly and with respect. This can encourage loyalty and trust, thereby minimizing potential motives for employee theft.

Wireless risk

In addition to the previously named threats, your office’s wireless communication networks — including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and cellular — can increase fraud risk. Fraud perpetrators can, for example, use mobile devices to gain access to sensitive information. One way to deter such activities is to restrict Wi-Fi to employees with special passwords or biometric access.

For more tips on preventing employee-originated cybercrime, or if you suspect a fraud scheme is underway, contact us for help.

Did you know that 91% of successful data breaches start with a spear phishing attack?

IT pros have realized that simulated phishing tests are urgently needed as an additional security layer. Today, phishing your own users is just as important as having antivirus and a firewall. It is a fun and an effective cybersecurity best practice to patch your last line of defense: USERS

Find out what percentage of your employees are Phish-prone™ with your free phishing security test from our partner, KnowBe4.

Here’s how it works:

Immediately start your test for up to 100 users.
Customize the phishing test template based on your environment.
Choose the landing page your users see after they click.
Show users which red flags they missed, or a 404 page.
Get a PDF emailed to you in 24 hours with your Phish-prone % and charts to share with management.
See how your organization compares to others in your industry.

Go Phishing Now