Global Cybersecurity Talent Shortage Intensifies During COVID-19
… access to the threat database.
Steve Earnshaw is NetStar’s vice president of product management. He said smishing is a form of phishing.
“Specifically, smishing is a phishing attack carried out via an SMS message (a text) or on another messaging platform,” he said. “And like all phishing attacks, smishing uses technology and social engineering in an attempt to trick people. Many people are more trusting of a text they receive from an unknown sender than of an email received from an unknown sender, and thus more likely to fall for smishing scams.”
Criminals use smishing to trick people into sharing personal information such as login credentials or banking information. Smishing attacks are on the rise, with millions of attacks worldwide in 2019, Earnshaw said.
“Our inSITE threat intelligence solution gives our partners a list of all active internet threats, refreshed every five minutes, including URLs and IP addresses associated with smishing and phishing attacks,” he said. “Partners can also access the inSITE historical threat database. Second, partners worldwide use NetStar’s inCompass internet categorization solution. With inCompass, we categorize websites into one of over 200 categories and partners can also create custom categories. Many mobile service providers use inCompass to maintain custom smishing deny lists, including newly registered domains that are designed to look like billing or support domains associated with the operator’s brand.”
Companies must continually educate their employees about social engineering and the critical need to protect corporate intellectual assets, Earnshaw said.
“As technology evolves, some threats become more sophisticated,” he said. “Companies should engage security vendors that partner with a company solely focused on internet threat detection. The internet is too nebulous and dynamic for a multifaceted security company to optimally cover it all. Partnering with a company like NetStar adds a best-of-breed internet categorization solution to their arsenal.”
Trend Micro: Despite Security Risks, Remote Workers ‘Breaking the Rules’
Nearly three in four remote workers say they are more conscious of their organization’s cybersecurity policies since lockdown began; however, many are breaking the rules anyway due to limited understanding or resource constraints.
Trend Micro’s Head in the Clouds study polled 13,200 remote workers across 27 countries on their attitudes toward corporate cybersecurity and IT policies. The survey reveals the approach businesses take to training is critical to ensure secure practices are being followed.
The results indicate a high level of security awareness, with 85% of respondents saying they take instructions from their IT team seriously. And 81% agree cybersecurity within their organization is partly their responsibility. Additionally, 64% acknowledge that using non-work applications on a corporate device is a security risk.
However, just because most people understand …