Cyber Crime - Protecting Against Online Fraud - While computers have improved the speed and efficiency of how we work, they have also allowed thieves and con artists an easier avenue by which to steal from people and businesses. One of the ways these cyber criminals use computers to steal is through online fraud, one of the fastest-growing crimes today.
Types of Online Fraud
Your company's intangible assets could be at risk if you or your employees are not mindful of online fraud attempts. Understanding and identifying different types of online fraud could save your company thousands, or even millions, of dollars in lost sales, damaged reputation, legal costs, etc.
- Social engineering is the act of taking advantage of human behaviour to commit a crime. Social engineers can gain access to buildings, computer systems and data simply by exploiting the weakest link in a security system‚-humans. For example, social engineers could steal sensitive documents or place key loggers on employees' computers at a bank‚-all while posing as an IT consultant from a well-known company. Social engineers can be tough to spot because they are masters at blending in.
- Phishing is attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, credit card numbers and other sensitive information by pretending to be a trusted entity in an electronic communication, such as email. One of the more common phishing scams is receiving an email that asks the user to verify his or her account information. A quick check of your email's spam folder would likely result in a few examples of phishing.
- Pagejacking and pharming occur when a computer user clicks on a link that brings him or her to an unexpected website. This can happen when a hacker steals part of a real website and uses it in the fake site, causing it to appear on search engines. As a result, users could unknowingly enter personal information or credit card numbers into the fake site, making it easy for a hacker to commit online fraud. Pharming is the name for a hacker's attack intended to redirect a website's traffic to a fake site.
- Vishing is similar to phishing and pharming, except victims of vishing attacks are solicited via telephone or another form of telecommunications. The hacker can easily pose as a representative of a bank or other institution and collect personal information that way.
Corporate Identity Theft
It doesn'nt matter if you are a Fortune 500 company or a small "ma and pa" shop, cyber thieves are always looking for their next score. It is often assumed that smaller businesses are too small to attract the attention of cyber crooks, but according to the Symantec SMB Threat Awareness Poll, 40 per cent of data breaches in 2011 occurred at small to mid-sized businesses. No company of any size is completely safe from cyber thieves.There are many ways a cyber thief can steal a company's identity in addition to the various types of online fraud listed above:
- Stealing credit history – A cyber thief could steal and use a company's credit history for his or her own financial gain, and then use it to set up a dummy corporation, racking up huge debt for the real company.
- Dumpster diving – All too often, papers with sensitive information are recklessly tossed in the garbage instead of being properly shredded and discarded.
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