Cyber attacks always spike when large holiday events happen, which include big sales like Cyber Monday, but can also affect smaller sales days like Memorial Day sales that online retailers use for incentives to boost sales. Cybercriminals love to take advantage of the naïve, stressed out, and busy. According to the national reporting center for fraud and cybercrime, 28,049 shoppers were conned out of their money in 2020. This is an increase of almost two-thirds compared to the prior year.

In a business environment, this becomes much worse.  Rather than personal assets, company assets that can affect entire teams of employees can become compromised.  This leads to an incredible loss of revenue in productivity at the very least.

The most notable thing that has become popular is Phishing.  These are emails sent out to look like legitimate emails from a banking institution, credit card company, or another recognizable name like Amazon or Microsoft whose job is to trick users into inputting their username and password.

Beware of any emails that come to you from recognizable names.  And always be suspicious of any kind of email that alerts you to a failed payment, problem with your account, or invoice.  Here are two important safety tips for email:

• Pay careful attention to the “FROM” name in the email.  It can still show a friendly “Display Name”, but following that is the actual email address it came from, and many times these are random gmail or foreign mailboxes.
• NEVER Click on a link in an email.  If you get an email from Microsoft or Chase Bank for example, go to your browser and navigate to the company in question directly.

Finally, make sure your email and computers in your office are protected by antivirus, malware and ransomware software.  If now, or you are not sure, check with your employer or IT department.  Integrated Axis provides thousands of local businesses with protection from these threats that are constantly attacking small businesses.  If you are ever unsure or want to bring this power protection to your company, give us a call today for a completely free security assessment.