Two weeks ago, we held a talk in cooperation with AustCham Thailand at the Banyan Tree, about the latest threats and dangers in the world of IT security.

We were really happy to have a roomful of people coming and listening to what Bernard Collin, our CEO and Founder, had to say. It turns out that many companies suffer from some of the latest IT threats around, perhaps most of all the very annoying and potentially devastating threat that is ransomware.

SafeComs CEO greeting a guest.

A few takeaways if you missed the talk

Ransomware is on the rise. Even though the search for ransomware on Google has dropped a bit the last month or so, the general trend of 2016 is that it’s indeed a very hot topic, and it poses a real danger to any company these days. Since a frightening amount of companies don’t have a proper data backup system, the consequences of getting struck by a ransomware attack can be financially severe.

Relatedly, the Google search for data recovery is constantly a hot topic, which means that a lot of people suffer from their data being lost, stolen or encrypted, be it due to ransomware or other evil forces.

Further, in 59% of the times, ransomware enters your organisation via email. To compare, in 24% of the times a company is hit by ransomware, it’s from a website or web application. Email is losing face – embarrassingly.

It’s highly important that you’re aware of what you click on in your emails, and that you’re 100% sure an email from a person that looks like someone you know, is legit. We’re all very busy these days, so it’s not easy to find time to double-check these things – but it can be crucial to your firm.

Real-life cases

This is a slide from our talk. As we can see, several major companies have suffered from hacks only in the last couple of years. They all had their – and in turn your – data hacked, stolen or leaked. Not good. Not good at all.

If it can happen to Yahoo, it can happen to you.”

Yes, that’s an incredibly cheesy thing to say, but it doesn’t make it less true. You can’t be too safe these days. As they use to say in the movies, better to be safe than sorry.

So how can you prevent it?

Come to our talk next time, and we’ll tell you.

But we’ll be nice here and give you three key points:

1. Educate your staff. Your people are your first line of defence against cybercrime.
2. Enforce procedures. Knowing what to do when things go south can mitigate risks and reduce severe damage.
3. Get good technology. A proper Antivirus, Anti-Spam/Anti-Malware, and a WAF (Web Application Firewall).

If you have these, you’ve actually come a long way.

Has my email been compromised in any data breach?

That’s certainly the question.

A tremendously good way to find out if your email address has been pwned (that means compromised) in a data breach at any site you have it registered on, pay a visit to havibeenpwned.com, and find out.

If you find that it’s indeed been pwned, you have to do these things – immediately:

1. Change your password on that site
2. Go to all other sites where you have that password, and change it
3. Go for a strong password; minimum 8 character, special signs (!@%), both BIG and small letters, and a number

As of the date of writing this, the recent Yahoo hack is not included in the database.

How can I stay up-to-date of all that’s going on in IT Security?

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These days, companies getting hacked and their data being leaked, stolen or encrypted seems to happen more often than not.

In 2014, it happened to the Japanese conglomerate otherwise known as Sony. A year prior to that, it happened to Target, the US’ second largest retailer, when they had 40 million credit cards stolen. To complete the hattrick, Yahoo had more than 500 million account hacked in 2014, only that it was made known to the public a few weeks ago, in September, 2016. And these cases are far from the only ones.

These are crazy days – but there’s hope.

It turns out, there are ways of staying secure, avoiding financial and image-harming damage in the process. We have turned to our very own IT Security expert, Bernard Collin, CEO and Founder of SafeComs, for the latest trends and threats in the world of cybersecurity.

Our CEO, Bernard Collin, greeting a guest at a talk we hosted last week with AustCham Thailand. All image rights belong to AustCham Thailand.

1. Bernard, you’ve been in this industry for 39 years. What are the hottest cyber security latest threats right now?

Well, we’ve seen two main challenges recently – one being ransomware, and the other one being ID theft.

• Ransomware is especially dangerous to suffer from for a company, as it totally damages your hard drives and servers, leaving you paralysed without any data until you pay the demanded ransom and get the decryption key – which, by the way, only happens in 30% of the times.

• The scary thing about ID Theft is that you can be on the damaging end of an incident without actually being compromised or hacked yourself. Today, these types of crimes are so well done and the methods incredibly sophisticated that it’s very easy to be fooled. Their goal is to trick you to pay money to a fake bank account, making it look like it’s to your own bank account, a friend’s bank account, your employer’s bank account, and so on – only that it isn’t. It’s someone else’s – and before you know it, your money is gone.

We at SafeComs always use to say that “people are the first line of defence”, and it’s certainly true. By being completely aware of  the risks, the common methods, and how to spot them, you can rest assured that the chances of you suffering from any of these threats is minimal.

2. What challenges have you helped customers overcome recently?

Recently, we saw an increase in companies who had lost data due to a hard drive crash without proper backup. We helped them recover their data from the damaged drive – and they were very lucky that the drive plates were not damaged. Thanks to that, we could successfully restore their data. 

Also, we are extremely happy to have been able to help a charity organisation that builds bridges to help remote populations in the mountains of Myanmar. These bridges are their only chance of communicating with other people and tribes without spending days hiking in the mountains. The charity organisation had lost data from one of their operations, containing crucial information to these projects. This was a data retrieval we were very happy with.

The other challenge is to make sure our customers understand that technology should never be their first line of defence – awareness is. You can deploy just about any sophisticated technology, if a person replies to an email asking them for their password, or rework a money transfer to another bank account, you will lose money, and you will be compromised.

CEO Bernard and Sales Manager Isak talking shop with a guest. All image rights belong to AustCham Thailand.

3. How has the big Yahoo hack affected the industry?

We have not yet seen the effect of it on hacking statistics, and it will take a little while before anything is known, if ever. The most damaging element is a blow to the credibility of these large data-handling organisations. They are constant targets of hackers; they try hard to protect their data silo, and in the end, someone gets in through a small undiscovered vulnerability. I am eagerly awaiting the results of the forensics to see whether people got in through a technical vulnerability, or as before with LinkedIn or Dropbox, they got in through a staff error.

4. What could’ve been done to prevent hacks like those from happening? Is there anything at all? 

Like I said, it is too early to make a comment, as we still don’t know how they got in. But you need to understand that the game is very unfair. Companies are under pressure to reach their business goals and requirements, there are needs to be cost-effective, all employees need fast access to data wherever they are, and the security team needs to secure every single entry point in the organisation. On the other end, the hacker has plenty of time and automated resources to try every possibility relentlessly. The worst thing is, he (or she) only needs one little entry point to gain access to your systems.

Security is a real challenge.

5. According to Google Trends, ransomware is a very popular search word these days. What are your thoughts about it?

I believe it is the most profitable criminal activity around with the least amount of risk. Which is why it’s not going anywhere – it’ll continue to do harm.

On the internet today, you can actually purchase all the tools you need to start a ransomware campaign of your own. There are cloud tools to perform ransomware attacks and exploit existing technology. The bright programmers who have developed the tools are too scared to use them and perform the crime themselves, so they have made their tools available online for others to use.

Although, if you look on the bright side, it’s pretty easy to protect yourself from it, because all that’s required is:

• Awareness of phishing baits (education, know what signs to look for)
• Technical protection (regular backups stored remotely with history, and good Antivirus/Anti-SPAM technology

If you have those two, you’ve come a long way in protecting yourself.

Bernard spreading the word. All image rights belong to AustCham Thailand.

6. What is on the plate right now for SafeComs? 

We are continuing our mission to help all our customers be as secure and safe as possible by bringing the best technology available to them, and by educating them on risk avoidance and mitigation.

These coming months, we are going to host a series of presentations in cooperation with various Chambers of Commerce in Thailand. For instance, last week, we had a really insightful – tooting my own horn here – talk  in cooperation with AustCham Thailand at the Banyan Tree. 

It was a really good turnout and a lot of people had a lot of questions and testified that it’s indeed a dangerous, risky time in the cybersecurity world.

It’s certainly not only large corporations that’s being hacked.

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