Who doesn’t love bank holidays? Is there anything better than waking up to your alarm you’ve forgotten to switch off on a Monday and realise you can roll over and go back to sleep? Some people can’t do that, people like medical professionals, shop assistants, and hackers.
That’s right, holidays are a good time for those in the business of cybercrime, and here’s why…
Mobile devices are easy to steal
When people are relaxed and off the boil with work, they’re much more likely to make mistakes when it comes to personal security. Owning a smartphone is the norm for most people, and while some employers do have robust BYOD or “Bring Your Own Device” policies, many don’t and are completely unaware of the risks they’re taking with company data.
Lost or stolen mobile devices
Did you know, that according to the Office of National Statistics 325,000 people had their mobile stolen across England and Wales in 2020? That’s a huge number! We wonder how many of those didn’t have passwords on them, and how many criminals had direct access to their work emails and systems with no security resistance whatsoever.
The statistics make sense, especially when it comes to holidays where the sun might come out, how easy is it to snooze on the beach with your bag sitting beside you just out of reach? Thieves know this and will be patrolling populated areas looking for exactly that kind of scenario. It’s not unique to bank holidays in the UK, either. Technology thieves often operate in tourist areas in other countries for the same reason.
As an employer, there is a way you can have some element of control over your company data, even in instances like these where it might appear at first that it’s out of your hands. By working with your IT provider on device management, you can actually allow employees to use their own devices for work but retain the ability to revoke access to emails/ sensitive data if that device were to go missing.
If you’d like to know more about mobile device management and keeping your business safe, book a call with Jon, he’d be happy to explain how that could work for you.
If the hackers are already reading your emails
This might sound a bit scare monger-y, but the reality is we see this kind of thing fairly often, and dealing with the aftermath of successful hacking attempts is the worst part of our job. We’d much rather educate people and prevent them!
If someone has unwittingly allowed a cybercriminal access to your systems, whether that’s by downloading a dodgy PDF from an email or being scammed into providing their login details, there could be someone sitting reading your emails right now, and you won’t know about it until it’s too late. We’ve written before about how cybercriminals can set up rules to redirect client emails, and you’ll never even see them.
They can spend weeks, or even months, reading your communication and learning enough about your role and your clients, to convincingly carry out fraud by pretending to be you over email.
If you work with a proactive IT company like us, this kind of sneaky attack can be spotted long before a bank holiday. We can be alerted to unusual activities such as the creation of random admin accounts, or the setting up of strange rules within email accounts. With this information, we can then deal with the hacker before they ever get the opportunity to steal what could potentially be thousands of pounds from you, one of your suppliers, or a client.
If you would like to know more, please feel free to book a call with us. We’ll be happy to explain more about how this could work for you.
