Surviving the turmoil of brexit (surviving the cybercriminals attack)

In the wake of the Brexit vote and the result for the leave campaign they has been an explosion in news reports on the UK and world economy and how companies and the markets are reacting to the vote decision along with stories of racism and harassment of individuals.

As with any news worthy event; and this is ranking at the top end of such events; the ‘proper’ media along with social media has exploded with stories and headlines capturing the eye of the individual. The result is that for the cyber-criminal there is a wealth of material to use to convincing individuals to fall for malware laden emails, drive by downloads and other attacks and both the individual and the employer is at increased risk of loss due to cyber-attack.

The material that is being generated as a result of the Brexit vote is being used as a hook to engage the individuals with the attack and what normally would be considered outlandish and ignored is now being responded to.

Attacks such as

•  Pretexting, pretextual, blagging
• Phishing, whaling, spear phishing, IVR and phone phishing
•  Baiting
• Quid pro quo
•  419, Nigerian scams, advance fee scams

Can all be made more believable by referencing stories from or purported to be from the fallout of the Brexit vote. How many of your employees would look at an email reporting to continue information on the relocation of corporate headquarters to another European capital, or would individuals fall for news on the banking struggling to meet foreign currency demands or having sufficient funds to cover cash withdrawals.

Any such emails, news site, social media article could be well meaning or be part of a cyber-attack. Organisations and individuals can protect themselves by ensuring their or they employees are aware of the types of attacks and the risks from them.

For the organisation they should establish security frameworks of trust aimed at the employee/personnel level (i.e., specify and train personnel when/where/why/how on how social engineering attacks should be handled).

These frameworks should cover

•  Identifying how social engineering attacks are committed
• The type of headlines and information used to make them believable; focusing on current affairs.
• The incident response procedures for handling such attacks, especially if they think they fell for an attack

The employees should be trained in the security frameworks, the frameworks should be tested through a strategy of both announced and unannounced, periodic tests of the security framework and the framework should be continuously reviewed as no solutions to information integrity are perfect.