2021’s MOST DANGEROUS SCAMS
Take one pandemic, add a nationwide dollop of homeworking and a rich helping of ever-hungry cybercriminals and you’ve got the perfect recipe for an upswing in online crime. Recent research published by the Ponemon Institute found that in the UK 79% of respondents have seen an increase in social engineering attacks since the start of the pandemic. In contrast, just 43% of organisations in the UK were found to have any policy on security requirements for those working from home. The scammers have never had it so good.
Whether you’re a business owner, IT manager, employee or simply looking after the home network, it pays to be aware of the dangers that are out there. With that in mind, these are the most dangerous scams to watch for in 2021, with tips on how to mitigate against them.
PHISHING, SMISHING AND VISHING
There are many definitions of phishing – by far and away the most common social-engineering threat facing businesses and consumers today. Wikipedia calls it a “fraudulent attempt to obtain sensitive information or data… by disguising oneself as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication”.
While we tend to think of phishing as just an email scam, there are variants that employ text messaging known (“smishing”) and voice calls (“vishing”). I’ll come back to vishing shortly, as this is a scam methodology that matured during 2020 and one particular exploit is well worth being on your 2021 threat radar. But as for phishing and smishing, the goal largely remains the same: con the user into clicking a link that leads to malicious activity.
What happens when you click that link is worthy of a deeper dive (). As for the nature of the scams themselves, these will be both ever-changing and the same tired attacks. Just look through your email spam folder and you’ll see a mix of bogus invoices and emerging
