Protect Your Business from Phishing and Computer Viruses
Phishing
Despite the different spelling, phishing is a very similar idea to fishing; sending out thousands of fraudulent emails and hoping that someone falls for it (bites!).
The trick that fraudsters use is to disguise their email as a legitimate one from a bank, credit card company or other respected business (e.g. PayPal, eBay, etc); and ‘warn’ you that you need to log in to your account immediately. When you follow the link it takes you to a site that looks like the genuine site, but is in fact a copy; once you put your details in it logs them, allowing the fraudster to use them to access your account on the genuine site.
The difficulty with phishing is that the emails are made to look like they really come from the company (e.g. Even though the email has come from the fraudster, it may show as coming from security@yourbank.com. The simple solution to phishing is to never follow the link within the email; if you are not expecting an email from the bank or company, contact them first to see if the email is genuine. Most companies would never say “You have 24 hours to sign in or we will close your account”; a message such as this is almost always a sign of a phishing scam. Another form of phishing scam involves people tricking search engines into displaying their copied site as if it was the genuine thing. People click on the link believing it to be genuine but are actually taken to a fraudster’s site. This type of fraud is uncommon, but you can avoid it completely by always typing in the name of the website manually into your browser (or adding it to your ‘favourites’ list).
Computer Viruses
Some forms of computer virus can be used by fraudsters to steal your identity, usually without you being aware of it. A computer trojan is a type of virus that allows fraudsters to easily access your computer and its contents. With your computer accessible they can steal information, make orders and carry out any number of damaging activities. A ‘keystroke logger’ is a type of program used to transmit information back to fraudsters. Once on your computer, the program logs any keys you press and sends them; allowing the fraudster to scan through the keys for login and password type data. Once they have this they can easily break into your accounts and systems. The good thing about computer viruses is that they cannot get onto your computer without you letting them in (I.e.: Running an infected program or file). This means that if you check your files and never open suspicious or unexpected files you can cut the risk of infection to almost zero.
The key things you can do to prevent viruses and other attacks are the following: 1. Install a virus killer / scanner (on every computer in your business) and check every new file you download and run, the scanner stays running while your computer is on and will help alert you to any potential threats before they cause too much damage. This does not have to be expensive; you can get a reasonable virus killer for free from the internet. 2. Install a firewall on every computer in your business. This will protect you from unauthorised access to your computer by hackers, and will help to limit the accessibility of your computer if you fall victim to a trojan virus. While some firewalls are costly, you can get basic editions for free from the internet. 3. Avoid downloading any file where you do not know exactly what it is; most viruses are spread by emails that pretend to be of interesting or unusual things. If you avoid unknown attachments and virus check everything before you run it; you will catch 99% of virus threats.
4. Ensure that any employees you have know what a virus killer and firewall are and how to use them. Make sure that they also check all files and avoid downloading and running any files that are unknown. 5. You can help protect against unauthorised access to your computers by keeping your internet browser up to date; this helps to fix any security holes that may be present. The popular browser program Firefox does the same job as Internet Explorer but is widely believed to be more secure.
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