Threat Intelligence Blog

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Cyber Tip Tuesday - Users are unfortunately not as good at spotting phishing emails as they think they are, and that overconfidence can be dangerous

Welcome to this week's Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday, this week Tony is talking about how many users are not as good at spotting phishing emails as they think they are, and how that overconfidence can be dangerous. It has been proven that users are not as good at spotting phishing emails as they think they are, and as many as 1 in 4 users will fall for fairly basic phishing attacks. Traditional training and awareness around phishing is not working and firms need to take a different approach.

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The majority of data breaches over the last couple of years were caused by users sending emails to the wrong recipients - how can you stop this?

Welcome to this week's Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday, this week Tony is talking about users sending emails to the wrong recipient. The majority of data breaches reported to the data commissioner, both locally and nationally, have involved users sending emails to the wrong recipients. This is clearly a problem and many technical controls won't defend against this as this comes down to human error. Human error is the leading cause of data breaches today, because people make mistakes and break the rules. In many cases, people may not even realise they’re doing anything wrong. If businesses want to keep their data safe, they need to start at the human level and create a people-centric approach to cyber security that focuses on educating and protecting their employees. We can help provide controls that help to reinforce this human level and reduce instances of users send emails to the wrong recipients.

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Should firms conduct phishing testing against their own staff? What pitfalls should they look out for?

The vast majority of successful attacks against firms stem from phishing emails. Traditional user training is often largely ineffective at preventing users clicking on these phishing emails, and users are not as good as they think they are at spotting phishing emails - with as many as 1 in 4 staff clicking on phishing emails.

For this reason it is absolutely essential all firms conduct phishing testing against their own users, but it is just as essential to ensure it is done properly if you want it to be effective. There are pitfalls to be avoided if you want this to be successful. Testing should be conducted with the aim of making your organisation more secure, not done just to put a tick in a box to meet a regulatory requirement.

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What is MDM? The first of a new series explaining different technical controls, in this episode James explains Mobile Device Management

Welcome to this week's Cyber Tip Tuesday. This week James is doing the first of a series looking at specific technical controls, this week Mobile Device Management, or MDM You may have heard of MDM…but what is it? Mobile Device Management is the technology used to administer mobile devices such as phones, tablets and laptops. Because these devices often run across platforms provided by different vendors, for example, Apple's iOS, Google's Android or Microsoft Windows they must be managed by a product that is compatible with all of them. If your company's confidential data is stored or accessed on any of these devices then it is important that you extend your technical controls to encompass the unique security requirements and vulnerabilities that can be exploited to gain access to it. If you'd like to know more about MDM or other technical controls, please contact us.

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Welcome to this week's Cyber Tip Tuesday, this week Tony talks about patching

Welcome to this week's Cyber Tuesday and hopefully you've all survived this storm unscathed. This week we're talking about patching. Installing updates as soon as possible after vendors make them available is a very good way to help keep your systems secure, and good patch management remediates, or prevents, a huge number of threats. Having said that Microsoft in particular of late have had issues with some of their updates so make sure you either test the updates on a non production environment first, that is on systems that aren't critical to you running your business, such as a dedicated test environment, or for smaller businesses that don't have the luxury of a test environment maybe wait a few days or a week or so before updating. Contact us for more info.

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Welcome to this week's Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday - This week Tony talks about about why it is important to us to be independent, and how our impartiality and objectivity helps our customers.

This week we are talking about why it is important to us to be independent and how our independence helps us and helps our customers. As an independently owned and operated business we are able to be completely impartial and objective, we are not tied to any vendor, product, service provider or supplier, and this means we can objective and transparent in our approach. We offer true independence and can advise on a range of different solutions to meet all budgets. We can work with you whether you have IT in house or whether you outsource your IT to an external third party provider, and remember anyway that information security goes far beyond just being an IT problem. Talk to us to see how we can help you to evaluate the efficacy of the controls you have in place or where you might benefit from new ones.

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Cyber Tip Tuesday for 21 January 2020 - James talks about the dangers of Internet of Things (IoT) and Shadow IT

Welcome to this week's Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday. This week James is talking about dangers from Internet of Things (IoT) and Shadow IT devices that may have crept onto your corporate networks. Do you know all the devices on your network? Do they introduce security risks to your business? In an increasingly connected world, the security umbrella with which you protect your organisation’s information assets is constantly expanding. At the fringes and often overlooked by businesses, are the Internet of Things (or IoT) and Shadow IT.

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Cyber Tip Tuesday for 14 January - No Technical Tool or Tools offer 100% Protection

Today we are talking about tools, as no tool, or suite of tools, can offer one hundred percent protection, after all anything man made can be man broken! Even if a tool did offer complete protection today there will be teams of people around the world working around the clock to break it. Anyone who says they rest easy or who says they sleep well at night because they have a particular tool is likely overconfident in that tool's ability to keep them safe. Multiple layers of protection are needed and any technical solution still needs to be backed up with robust people and governance controls.

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Week in review 12 January 2020 – Office 365 Phishing, Firms Hit Once Per Minute, Dixons Carphone fined, Travelex hackers threaten to sell data, Firefox zero-day exploit, Citrix scanned for vulns

Week in review 12 January 2020 – Office 365 Phishing Attacks, Firms Hit Once Per Minute in 2019, Dixons Carphone Fined for Breach, Travelex hackers threaten to sell credit card data, Mozilla patches actively exploited Firefox zero-day, Hackers probe Citrix servers for remote code execution vulnerability

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Our first Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday video for 2020 - what's coming up in the next couple of months

Welcome to our first Black Arrow Cyber Tip Tuesday for 2020 a chance for us to have a think about what's coming up over the next couple of months. Firstly, we know the new GFSC rules on cyber security will be going out to consultation and we know that the GFSC will be putting a lot more focus on cyber security, both in terms of operational and governance risk, and regulated firms need to think about how they are going to demonstrate compliance with these new regulations. Secondly, we will be holding our first workshop for charities later in Q1, once we have completed a number of case studies with local charities to ensure the workshop hits the right note with the charities we are trying to help. More info on this will follow in the next month or so. Whether you're a regulated financial services firm, any other kind of business, large or small, or a charity, contact us today to see how we can help make security easier for you to understand and protect yourselves against attacks.

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