Three of the scariest cyber threats facing charities

A cyber attack can cost a charity thousands or even millions of pounds, and potentially force it to stop doing its work and close its doors for good.

 

Charities face many different cyber threats this Halloween, with new ones appearing all the time. Here are three of the scariest ones your charity may face, and what you can do to prevent them.

 

 

Social engineering

 

Many people imagine cyber criminals to be computer experts, but people who use social engineering harness the power of persuasion to get victims to bypass their own cyber security systems. The results can be as devastating as the most sophisticated cyber attacks.

 

For example, car parts supplier Toyota Boshoku lost $37 million when cyber criminals convinced an employee to change a supplier’s bank details to an account controlled by the attackers.

 

Another example: technology company Ubiquiti Networks lost more than $40 million when one of its employees’ email accounts was compromised. The cyber criminals then used the hijacked email to pretend to be the employee and submit payment requests in favour of a bogus firm which were paid by the company’s accounts department.

 

Social engineering can be carried out by emails and this includes phishing emails which try to persuade potential victims to download and open files which actually contain malware or to enter their passwords at fake websites.

 

But social engineering may also involve phone calls – for example someone could call up a victim and tell them that they are from the IT department, saying that they need to know a password so that they can access an account and sort out some non-existent computer problem.

 

 

How to avoid social engineering attacks

• Don’t act on any requests made by telephone from anyone you don’t know personally without verifying their identity in some other way
• Don’t assume emails come from the person they appear to come from
• Don’t open email attachments or click links contained in emails you are not expecting
• Use multi-factor authentication so your accounts remain secure

 

 

Ransomware

 

When ransomware infects an organisation’s computer systems, data stored on those computers is encrypted so that it is no longer readable. That usually means that the organisation’s activities grind to a halt. The cyber criminals responsible then demand a ransom payment for the key which can decrypt the data.

 

Ransomware is a huge problem and it can be very expensive for its victims. For example, US travel services company CWT Global paid a ransom of $4.5 million to recover two terabytes of its data including financial records, security documentation, and salary records. More recently, Colonial Pipeline, a fuel network operator, paid cyber criminals a $4.4 million ransom.

 

Recently cyber criminals have been using ransomware as part of their cyber attacks. In some cases, they are now attacking backup administration consoles, according to IT research firm Gartner. This enables them to turn off backups and change data retention policies, and it also tells them where important information is stored.

 

This is particularly scary because the main form of protection against ransomware is ensuring that backup copies of data exist. That’s because backup copies can be used if ransomware makes the main data storage systems inaccessible. But if the cyber criminals disable backups, organisations may feel they have no option but to pay.

 

Cyber criminals are now beginning to steal data at the same time that they plant ransomware. This allows them to demand a ransom in return for keeping the stolen data private, even if backups of encrypted data exist.

 

 

How to avoid ransomware attacks

• Ensure that you take regular backups of your data
• Ensure that all computer systems are running up to data anti-ransomware software
• Ensure that the software running on computer systems is up to date with the latest security patches
• Consider cyber security insurance that covers ransomware attacks
• Follow these steps if your charity’s computers get infected with ransomware