September 8, 2015 – A recent article discussed the continued prevalence of “tried-and-true” techniques and methods used by cybercriminals to gain unlawful access to a victim’s information. A mid-year report released by the cyber risk intelligence solution provider, SurfWatch Labs noted that, “the most common enabler for cybercrime methods was user interaction points with websites, applications, accounts and endpoints - accounting for 77% of all evaluated cyber intelligence collected and analyzed by SurfWatch Labs.”

One would think that with the increasing sophistication of cybercrime capabilities, these methods would fall, outdated, to the wayside. However, attackers still appear to go after “soft targets,” exploiting the numerous decision-points faced by end-users when interacting with technology. SurfWatch cautioned financial institutions and other organizations with an online presence to treat cybersecurity concerns with the same urgency and importance as other aspects of risk and security.

This is important to keep in mind when another report has found that half of all federal employees access government email and documents from their personal smartphones and mobile devices.

The lack of emphasis on cybersecurity concerns is alarming at the commercial level, and dangerous at the government level, particularly when considering the array of tools a cybercriminal has access to in order to steal sensitive information. Human carelessness is just another tool to add to that belt.

Sources

Kelly, Erin. “Federal workers’ personal devices pose security risk.” USA Today. MSN News, 20 August 2015. Web. 25 August 2015.