In 2014, a whole new method for spamming began to emerge - Snowshoe Spam. It works like this: Spammers use botnets to send a huge amount of spam at a low volume per IP address, which makes it harder to prevent. According to Cisco, snowshoe senders increased from 7% in 2013 to 15% in 2014. Of course, anti-spam technology and security companies who learn everything they can about how to prevent spam started improving their defenses against snowshoe - which encouraged spammers to update and improve their techniques… In 2016, the Cisco Talos and Umbrella research teams identified an evolved version of snowshoe known as “hailstorm.” Hailstorm still relies on a large army of botnets that send a low volume of spam per IP … [Read more...] about How to Prevent Spam with 6 Proven Tips
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How to Get Rid of Adware with These 5 Tips
250 million PC’s were infected with malware earlier this year that seemed benign but turned out to be extremely dangerous. The malware was known as Fireball and was packaged within numerous types of adware. According to Checkpoint, it was designed to change your default search engine and track your web traffic on behalf of a digital marketing firm in Beijing named Rafotech. But that’s not the dangerous part... The dangerous part of Fireball was this: It had the capability to take over any code on the victim’s computer or download additional malware, turning your computer into a zombie that’s easily manipulated by an opportunistic hacker. If you want to learn how to get rid of adware that carries malware like Fireball, … [Read more...] about How to Get Rid of Adware with These 5 Tips
How to Protect Against Ransomware: 7 Ways to Stop the Worst Cyberthreat
Global ransomware damage costs predicted to exceed $5 billion in 2017, up from $325 million in 2015, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. And it gets worse... Steve Morgan, founder and Editor-In-Chief at Cybersecurity Ventures said in the same report, “While the percentage of ransom victims who pay Bitcoin to hackers in hopes of reclaiming their data appears to be on the decline, the total damage costs in connection to ransomware attacks is skyrocketing. We believe ransom payouts are the least of all damage cost contributors.” Mike Fey, president and COO of Symantec, said, “The ‘clean up’ for companies who were impacted by WannaCry will be enormous, including months of recovery time for IT departments and multi-millions in cost for … [Read more...] about How to Protect Against Ransomware: 7 Ways to Stop the Worst Cyberthreat
Business Email Compromise: 10 Ways to Prevent 5 Common Scams
You or your company could be one of the 22,000 victims of a business email compromise scam and never even know it. That’s because it’s no longer that Nigerian prince asking you to wire him money so he can save his people - hopefully you, like most people, know emails like that are BS. Now the scam is less obvious: it’s your CxO emailing you, asking you to pay for the latest business expense. Except, it’s not actually your CxO emailing you, there is no business expense, and now your company’s money is in the hands of a cyber criminal halfway across the world. This is the new kind of email fraud and it’s making 21st-century con artists filthy rich. In 2016, The FBI issued a public service announcement stating that roughly … [Read more...] about Business Email Compromise: 10 Ways to Prevent 5 Common Scams
How to Optimize Your Company Intranet in 3 Steps
Your company intranet is an intricate part of a strong company culture that should help employees work better and faster through collaboration. Unfortunately, many intranets fail to be the “intuitive, go-to information silo” they’re supposed to be, instead falling into the category of “clunky, not-going-to-waste-my-time information hole.” This is a problem of intranet optimization - which we know isn’t usually at the forefront of most company leader’s minds. Perhaps you believe your company’s intranet is just fine, even though you haven’t invested any time into researching how employees actually feel about and use it. We politely suggest you may want to reconsider. Nielsen Norman Group, a user experience research firm, … [Read more...] about How to Optimize Your Company Intranet in 3 Steps