Our stories

One bank transaction: six potential attacks

One of our colleagues had a call from their bank’s fraud team this week, because the fraud team were concerned that she was being scammed. We’re sharing the story because it covers a number of possible frauds that could happen to you, or to your business. The payment she’d requested was to go to a newly set up payee at ...

Don’t let your cyber security slide

The UK Government has recently issued the latest version of its cyber security breaches survey, and we’d like to talk about two of their findings today:
  1. Although the threat of a cyber attack hasn’t dropped, small organisations are identifying fewer cyber security breaches and attacks this year than they did last year.
  2. The proportion of micro businesses (those with ...
two avocado halves representing the difference between admin accounts and user accounts

Are you a user?

When you bought your new laptop, did you take much notice of whether you were setting up an administrator account or a user account? Probably not. Most people are just too excited to get their hands on a new device to think about cyber security when setting it up. But here’s the thing: an administrator account (or admin) has permission ...

Unexpected PayPal Payment Requests: Phishing 

One of our colleagues has recently received multiple PayPal phishing emails. There’s obviously a number of these going around, so we thought we’d share some information about these, to help you spot them when one lands in your inbox.   Three warning signs These emails looked very convincing: right branding, right layout, realistic footer information. So, what gave it away?
    ...

What’s Lurking in the Shadows? Inactive Accounts

Recently we talked about Shadow IT. Today’s topic is related: inactive accounts. Let’s think about those shadow IT applications and services, including those that you brought in from the cold (once you discovered them). The person who first tried them out will have set themselves up with an account; perhaps the whole department had accounts. When you tested the program ...

What’s Lurking in the Shadows? Risks of Shadow IT 

What is shadow IT?  Shadow IT typically happens for the best of reasons. Perhaps one of your employees downloaded a trial, or a free version of software, to see if it would work in their department, or because they wanted to improve their own performance (perhaps a productivity app, or a grammar-checker). Sometimes, after investigating a software package, it isn’t ...