When it comes to cybersecurity protection many companies claim to be the end all be all for protection. But at the end of the day the truth is that they ALL are.
What does this mean, I’ll explain?
Let’s start by going back in time and revisit what cybersecurity meant years ago before the cybersecurity criminals were really established.
Not so many years ago, if you had an Apple computer the chances of you getting a virus were slim. The reason being, that it wasn’t anymore protected than that of a PC operating system, it was that there were more PCs at the time and cyber criminals knew that they had a better chance of infecting computers by building PC targeted viruses.
Fast forward to today, that is no longer the case.
At present, Apple devices are just as likely to get attacked and infected as PC/Windows devices because the cyber criminals have learned and improved their attack capability. Also, because the cyber criminals have changed their attack strategies and methodologies it requires the industry to change along with them.
So, the “One size fits all” approach does not really apply in this matter, meaning Anti-virus and malware protection alone will not protect you, nor will putting all your eggs in one basket when it comes to protecting you, your family or your business by using just one company to protect yourself or your organization.
Case in point: Recently a customer of ours experienced a cyber incident with regards to some of their accounts that had been breached. One of their email accounts, a bank account, and several credit cards had been breached and compromised.
The cyber criminals pulled information that had been leaked on the dark web and were able to get into one of the customers email accounts.
Once in, they look for any material that might be tied to a banks or credit cards.
By doing this they can then approach any of the banks or credit cards the customer has and apply for a change in a password.
This only works for accounts that aren’t using 2FA by the way, which is why 2FA is an important tool in your line up of protection, but that is for another time. In this case, the cyber criminals were able to change a bank account login and one of their cards as well.
Fortunately, the customer was using a multi-layered approach in their defense strategy.
By doing so, one of their defense tools, the Password Vault and Dark Web monitoring tool alerted them to this fraudulent activity.
Why didn’t the Identity Theft Protection tool in their arsenal alert the same?
In this case the Identity Protection tool saw that their account information was changed but that it was done from an email account it already recognized as safe thereby tricking their system and allowing it to pass inspection. Thus, getting by their defenses.
The one thing that saved the customer in this case was the Alert from the Password Vault Tool that asked the customer if they had changed their account information. A feature the other company uses but whose settings for alerting customers are different.
What does this all mean?
As the adage goes: Do not put all your eggs in one basket!
That still holds true today as it has for hundreds of years. Even in cybersecurity.
A multi layered approach is the best way to tackle cyber security as many companies are now finding out along with many governments.
Please Stay Safe!