Phish are always in season
Some of my fondest childhood memories were made in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. In particular, fishing for rainbow trout in the clear cool water of Bear Creek. My father once shared a memory of his youth, fishing the creek with his Uncle…
Protecting against COVID-19 scams
If your work and personal inboxes look anything like mine, everything ranging from the power company to credit card companies to convenient stores have shared information about their response to COVID- 19. Fraudsters are also sending emails and making phone calls, hoping to catch individuals…
Secrets
“Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.” – Benjamin Franklin If Ben were alive today, he’d need to add a qualifier: “and the third isn’t on Facebook.” Social media compels many individuals to share the smallest details of their personal lives. …
Password potato chips
Passwords are like potato chips. You can’t (and shouldn’t) have just one. A new trend is developing in phishing and email extortion tactics. Attackers are including the potential victims’ passwords in the messages sent. This is new. Why would they do this? If you’re the…
Protecting what’s yours
We’ve all seen security breaches covered in the news: Equifax – at a cost of nearly $243M, Uber – resulting in $148M in combined fines, and just last year, Facebook – at a potential cost of $1.63B. Beyond the financial repercussions of these events, and…
A tale of two billboards
Imagine a plush community of beautiful, sprawling estates where each property is protected by a high-end security system. Now imagine two enormous billboards along the nearby interstate. Once a month, the first billboard displays a list of newly discovered flaws in the community’s security systems. …
Use 19th century technology to defeat 21st century fraud
March 10, 1876. Alexander Graham Bell’s Boston laboratory. “Mr. Watson come here – I want to see you. I think someone just looted my brokerage account.” Okay. Those may not have been the exact words spoken over the first useful telephonic device. But similar words…