Cyber Threats | Keep One Step Ahead of Hackers this Holiday Season
Since the holiday season is upon us once again, it is extremely important to consider the ways that your online activity may be compromising the security of your sensitive information. An American technology company called Symantec found in their 2015 Internet Security Threat Report that “While 2013 was seen as the year of the Mega Breach, 2014 had high-profile vulnerabilities grabbing the headlines. Data breaches are still a significant issue, since the number of breaches increased 23 percent [since 2014] and attackers were still responsible for the majority of these breaches.” The most alarming part is that these types of cyber-attacks are only amplified during the holiday season.
In this post we will discuss three aspects of holiday-specific cyber threats, including increased phishing e-mail circulation, compromised websites for online shoppers, and over-crowded public Wi-Fi hotspots, and how they affect consumers and ways in which you might go about protecting yourself.
Cyber Threat: Increased Phishing E-mail Circulation
The holiday season is a gold mine for malicious hackers who make their living off of circulating phishing e-mails to obtain sensitive information like personal information and online banking credentials from unsuspecting victims. Due to the fact that shoppers are always looking for a good deal while buying gifts for loved ones during the holiday season, it is extremely common for phishing e-mails to include bogus promotions from well-known companies to lure consumers into clicking links that are included in the e-mail so that their sensitive information can be accessed.
When dealing with phishing e-mails, it is essential to trust your gut when something doesn’t seem right about the e-mail that you have received. In many cases, there will be aspects of the e-mail or website link that will be distinctly different from that of the real thing, so it it always a great idea to double check the url of the link and cross-reference it with the actual url. If you feel that you have received a phishing e-mail from a well-known corporation it is a good idea to call the company and ask them about it, and they will let you know for sure if the e-mail is legitimate.
Cyber Threat: Compromised Websites for Online Shoppers
Due to the exponential increase in traffic for online shopping websites during the holiday season, it is a common occurrence for the websites to either fail or be compromised from an outside source due to the fact that they weren’t built to attend to the traffic that they experience. A recent example of this was seen on the website for Adele’s most recent tour, when they were shown personal information and credit card numbers that did not belong to them due to the fact that the website simply could not handle the magnitude of people that were buying tickets at the same time. In many cases such as this, it really comes down to being a problem of too much traffic with too little monitoring of the network.
Another alarming phenomenon that attributes to widespread compromise of online shopping websites was shown is a survey carried out by Bit9, an endpoint security software company operating out of Massachusetts, when they found found that 26% of businesses feel that antivirus software does not protect their point of sales devices from malware, and that 20% of businesses turn off antivirus software during the holiday season in order to avoid transactional slowdowns. Another survey released by Nationwide Property & Casualty, a Columbus-based business insurance provided, stated that 8 of 10 businesses do not have a cyber-attack response plan in place. For business who share these sentiments, once antivirus software has been deactivated it becomes much easier for hackers to gain access to business networks that house everything from personal information to credit card numbers and purchasing habits.
Cyber Threat: Over-Crowded Public Wi-Fi Hotspots
Public Wi-Fi hotspots in high-traffic areas such as shopping malls are a hacker’s playground during the holiday season. Due to the fact that most public Wi-Fi does not require the encryption of data, there is essentially nothing in place to protect the information that is being transferred on the network once a hacker gains access to it. As you read in our last blog post on public Wi-Fi, there are a variety of techniques that hackers use to get access to your information via public Wi-Fi such as traffic sniffing, session hijacking, and “Evil Twin” attacks. In light of the increase in cyber-attacks during the holiday season it is important to understand that the more that you can educate yourself on these techniques, the better.
Make sure to monitor your online activity in special detail this holiday season so that you can prevent any breaches of your sensitive information. If you have any questions or comments about what you can do to protect yourself, contact us at [email protected].
