Summer a high season for IT fraudsters – how to protect your company against IT attacks during the holidays

The summer holidays are fast approaching and many of us are looking forward to a long and enjoyable time off work. IT fraudsters, on the other hand, are some of those not taking a holiday. The reality is that the risk of cyberattacks and various types of fraud increases during the summer. Dennie Karlsson, Group CISO at Dustin, shares some of his best tips to avoid IT attacks during the summer.

Remain calm
During the holidays, the amount of phishing e-mails increases, meaning e-mails that may, for example, look like they are from the company’s CEO, and in which the recipient is encouraged to act quickly. This is often because they want to gain access to money and/or passwords.

“If you receive this kind of e-mail, it is important to remain calm and not follow the instructions you have been presented with. If you receive an e-mail from the company that encourages you to act immediately, you should contact your colleagues and check if this is really the case rather than acting immediately. Attacks exploit our desire to please everyone by doing the right thing, and use lack of time as a tool to make us act without thinking critically,” says Dennie Karlsson.

Multi-factor authentication and password management
Multi-factor authorisation (MFA) is still something that considerably increases protection and using MFA for company as well as private applications, such as Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, is strongly recommended. Password Manager is also an application that Dennie Karlsson encourages people to use:

“Attackers are often looking for user credentials, and as a result, something I would like to recommend is some kind of password manager to keep track of all passwords and ensure that no password is used for more than one place,” he says.

The STAR method
Another technique you can use to minimise the risk of IT attacks is to apply the STAR method: Stop, Think, Ask and Report.

“If you are unsure, the STAR method is good to fall back on. Stop and do not click on anything or do anything else. Think and assess the risk based on what you know. Ask someone for a second opinion and Report suspected IT attacks,” concludes Dennie Karlsson.