As 2018 has come to an end and we ring in the new year, it might be a good time to address the most important part of security within your business… the human element. Starting the new year off with educating employees on security tactics is a resolution that you shouldn’t overlook. Here is a new element you might want to add to your beginning of the year security training, vishing.
Vishing
A new type of malicious information gathering, similar to phishing, is called vishing. This new term is coined from “voice phishing”. The key element to vishing is the human on your end of the telephone. Anyone is vulnerable to this type of attack, but the victims are most commonly working in your areas of customer service, sales, and HR.
What Does It Look Like?
Criminals who are vishing will utilize the phone as their main source of information. Like phishing, criminals who are vishing will pretend to be someone they’re not in order to gain access to information and accounts that will benefit them financially. In 2017, Boulder Valley School District experienced a case of vishing that ended up in a devastating loss of $850,000. Someone called pretending to be an employee at the construction company they were working with and asked to speak with the accounts payable department. The vishing criminal then had payments from the school district sent to a fraudulent account that the criminal had set up. The only way that the school district found out that they were a part of a vishing scam was when they began to receive late payment notices from the genuine construction company. The ultimate loss was $850,00 that was sent to the criminal.
But vishing doesn’t always look like this. It can also look like a person impersonating someone from your HR department who is asking for you to send them your employee’s W-2s. More on the specifies of the W-2 scam, here!
Facts about Vishing (Provided by Security Boulevard):
- Vishing calls are most successful in the afternoons.
- Friday is the most vulnerable days for employees.
- HR open enrollment is the most successful pretext.
The most beneficial thing that you can do as a small business owner is to educate your employees on the newest scams and tactics that criminals use to gain access to information for financial gain. Begin your new year with a brief update on old scams as well as educating them on the new ones.
LibertyID is the leader in identity theft restoration having restored the identities of tens of thousands of individuals without fail. If you retain personal information on your customers, now it is time to get data breach planning and a response program in place with our LibertyID for Small Business data breach defense program. With LibertyID Enterprise you can now add value to existing products, services, or relationships by covering your customers, employees, or members with LibertyID’s fully managed identity theft restoration service—at a fraction of our retail price—with no enrollment and no file sharing. We have no direct communication with your group members–until they need us.
Call us now for a no obligation proposal at 844-411-LIBERTY (844-411-5423).