Computer security, also known as cybersecurity is a hot topic for organizations and businesses of all sizes across every industry. Of course, every company has different priorities and insights. The field is becoming a more important area cause of increased reliance on computer systems, the Internet and wireless network standards. It is also one of the major challenges in the contemporary world. Cybersecurity is very important to Individuals.
According to Oluwafemi Obadare (Cybersecurity Advisory at Digital Encode) while speaking about “Cybersecurity: More Important than a nuclear weapon” at a Cyberchain Conference, that held in Nigeria, on 31st August, 2019, that there are various types of Cyber-attacks which include; hacking, identity theft, phishing, DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service), SMishing, cyberstalking, spoofing, ransomware, cyberbullying and vishing.
The cyber incidents that have occurred in recent years are alarming. From simply hacking to identity theft. One of these incidents occurred at a Church in June 2019. Hackers emptied Church coffers with a simple phishing scam. The move was simple, a combination email scam and social engineering phone call. A call was made to St. Ambrose Catholic Parrish, claiming to be Marous Brothers Construction, a company working on the Church renovation project for the past 2 months. But that wasn’t from Marous Brothers Construction. The scammers told the church that payments were late.
A statement from the Saint Ambrose Catholic Parish’s Father Bob Stec said:
On Wednesday, Marous Brothers [construction] called inquiring as to why we had not paid our monthly payment on the project for the past two months totaling approximately $1,750,000. This was shocking news to us, as we have been very prompt on our payments every month and have received all the appropriate confirmations from the bank that the wire transfers of money to Marous were executed/confirmed.
The scammers convinced the church that the construction company they hired had changed their bank. Hindsight being 20/20, whoever received the call should have confirmed with another source. But they didn’t. Father Stec explained:
Upon a deeper investigation by the FBI, we found that our email system was hacked and the perpetrators were able to deceive us into believing Marous Brothers had changed their bank and wiring instructions. The result is that our payments were sent to a fraudulent bank account and the money was then swept out by the perpetrators before anyone knew what had happened.
According to the FBI, the criminals breached the church’s email account, then began a waiting game during which the hackers sat back and read all of the conversations in the inbox. Eventually, they were able to get enough information to convince the church to wire them money. Before the Church realized, it was out of $1.75 million in the middle of a major renovation, and all it took was a few emails, some Photoshop skills, and a phone call to derail the good intentions of the parish.
Saint Ambrose lost nearly $2 million as a result of the cyberattack, and may or may not get it back.
These cyber attackers are after some vital assets stored on your phones, laptops, and other smart devices. Assets like your personal information, digital information from a server, physical assets, and even protected information. These assets are the targets for cyber attacks been carried daily. So being careful about the information that’s shared cannot be overemphasized.
As technology has made life easier for the human race, it has also caused a lot of damage as regarding those who use these technologies for negative reasons. Some loopholes that create or cause these attacks are AI (Artificial Intelligence), USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data), mobile banking, mobile wallet, internet banking, AR (Augmented Reality), mobile money, IoT (Internet of Things), and X-aaS (anything-as-a-Service). The point is not to stop using these technologies, but to be extra careful what we do with them and how we use them.
Another path through which a hacker can gain access to your assets is known as a Threat Vector. These threat vectors include malware, phishing, social engineering, and others.
What you can do to avoid all these threats is to be proactive. Expect a scenario like these attacks and be ready before they even get to you, by making sure you’re secure to a level that you’re confident that nothing can attack your assets whatsoever.
Cybersecurity is not a destination you just get to, it’s a journey that continues as long as you make use of these technologies. So you need to be cybersecurity conscious as an individual because it’s very important.
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