Author Archive for: GLivingstone

That’s $2,742,354,049 lost to Business Email Compromise in the US in 2022

That number is eight times the population of the United States. If you stacked that number of dollar bills like a giant deck of cards and laid them horizontally, it would take you more than a day to drive that distance.

Unless you’re aware of the continually evolving cyber-threats, how can you make the most informed decisions about how to protect your organization?

As Bryley partner Barracuda describes them, Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks are audacious. The over 2.7-billion-dollar losses suffered via BEC far outstrip the money lost to ransomware – in 2022 there were $34 million dollars in reported ransomware payouts. And to pull off a BEC attack takes a lot more know-how and investment than ransomware does – Ransomware-as-a-Service can be found cheap – it’s like subscribing to a cloud service – on the dark web. BEC actors are stealthy, manipulative and tend to go big, to make it much harder for employees to suspect them … [5 min. read]

“Turn on syncing?” the browser asked.

“Syncing” tells the browser to allow stored credentials to be available across a person’s devices. And, why not? Sounds convenient.

Well, maybe the browser account password was phished. Or maybe the browser password had been reused from some other, previously compromised account. Whatever the exact reason, syncing turned out to be a problem when the personal browser account got hacked.

And the real problem was that a work login was found by the criminals among the passwords stored by the browser – and these work credentials were used to steal company data and lock the company systems with ransomware.

It’s easy to say the person shouldn’t have had a work login in a personal account. True enough, but what’s the reason someone would be doing that anyway? What things could the business management have done to have prevented this scenario from unfolding? [6 min. read]

I’m sure you remember that school was difficult and trying for the classes of 2020 and 2021. Early-on courses moved online. Then restrictions were changed multiple times. Commencements were put off. Courtney had been studying Business Administration and Interior Design at Bay Path University. So in that unprecedented time Courtney Leonard decided to step out into the professional world. Courtney began this phase of her life as a print production lead for Staples where she quickly became a supervisor.

The past year Courtney has been in Client Services at Bryley where she was recently promoted to a combined role as Client Experience Specialist and Marketing Coordinator … [4 min. read]

Are you familiar with TARDIS, Dr Who’s time-travel machine? It looks unassuming, but inside … I was interviewing Client Experience Specialist / Marketing Coordinator Courtney Leonard and she told me about her education in interior design. Even though she admits her knowledge is limited, she retains a lot of enthusiasm for the field, so I had to ask her about the Bryley building. Here’s what Courtney had to say about this … [3 min. read]

It’s an achievement to bring in a new technology solution that will help your employees do their jobs better or that will keep your business more secure.

It’s an achievement also because many companies look the other way when the time comes to review and update processes, legacy applications and machines. Are they trying to delay the inevitable?

But if you have decided to review and upgrade your tech processes, there are some things you should bear in mind to make the change as easy as possible … [6 min. read]