First, let me say happy new year! The holiday season has come and gone—seemingly overnight—and just like that, 2024 is well underway. At SafeBreach, we are eagerly looking to the new year and all that it will bring, including new goals and new opportunities to empower customers with greater visibility into the efficacy of their security tools and programs.

Phishing isn’t anything new. It’s been a tried and true threat for nearly 30 years. Its age, however, doesn’t diminish its seriousness.

With an average cost of USD 4.45 million for data breaches, the gravity of website security threats cannot be overstated. These attacks result in financial losses due to customer attrition, downtime, and disruptions and undermine customer trust. The rising numbers, increasing scale, sophistication, and impact of website security threats underline the necessity for proactive prevention measures. This article delves into 5 of the most common threats today and ways to prevent them.

User Account Control (UAC) serves as a security feature in Windows, aiming to safeguard the operating system from unauthorized modifications. Whenever alterations demand administrator-level permissions, UAC prompts the user, allowing them to either authorize or reject the requested change.

With over half of organizations being the victim of password-based attacks in the last year, new data sheds light on the risk of phishing attacks and the use of password-based credentials. If you don’t think credentials are a key element in cyber attacks, I refer you back to an article of mine from the middle of last year where 15 billion (with a ‘b’) credentials are on sale on the dark web.

Resecurity is tracking a cybercriminal gang called “GXC Team” that develops and sells tools to facilitate online banking theft and social engineering attacks. In November, the gang began selling a tool that uses artificial intelligence to craft fraudulent invoices for use in business email compromise (BEC) attacks. The invoices can hijack business transactions by replacing banking information contained in legitimate invoices.

Be careful of emails, SMS messages, or calls claiming to be from your bank about your card being used fraudulently. If this ever happens, call the phone number on the back of your card. This is a very common sort of social engineering fraud. Do not get scammed like TV host Andy Cohen did.

A flaw found by security researchers in the encryption software allows victim organizations to use “Black Basta Buster” to recover some of their data – but there’s a catch. We’ve all heard – for as long as ransomware attacks have been happening, you either need to pay the ransom or recover from backups. But a third option has now sprouted up on GitHub.

It’s not surprising that adoption of Cyber Essentials certification is growing steadily year on year. It’s a valuable certification to have, not least of all for the many commercial opportunities it presents. But as a Cyber Essentials Assessor, one thing I see repeatedly is that poor network boundary implementation making reaching certification harder than it has to be – especially for smaller organisations. That’s what I’m going to be looking at in this blog.

This mechanism is intended to simplify installing Windows apps after cybercriminals started using it to spread malware loaders that resulted in ransomware and backdoor outbreaks. The feature in question is called the ms-appinstaller consistent resource identifier plan, and its initial purpose was to make deploying Windows programs to devices simpler.