Protect Your Employees and Your Business Against Vishing

Key Points

• The increase in remote and hybrid workforces has created new opportunities for bad actors.
• Vishing is a type of fraud where criminals attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a reputable entity.
• Bad actors typically do this by making voice calls or leaving voicemails that appear to be from a legitimate organization.
• Vishing can have serious consequences for businesses, including compromised company data, financial losses, ransomware infections, and reputational damage.

Cybercriminals are always searching for new ways to prey on businesses and their employees, and the increase in remote and hybrid workforces has created new opportunities for bad actors to exploit. Businesses of all sizes are at risk, and employees are often the weak link in the security chain. One type of attack that is becoming more common is “vishing,” where attackers use social engineering techniques to trick victims into revealing sensitive information. As a business leader, it’s essential to be aware of this threat and take steps to protect your employees.

What Is Vishing and How Does It Work?

Vishing is a type of fraud where criminals attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a reputable entity. They typically do this by making voice calls or leaving voicemails that appear to be from a legitimate organization, such as a bank or government agency.

Vishing can be very difficult to detect, as the caller may have spoofed their caller ID to make it appear as if they are calling from a legitimate number. This can fool even the most tech-savvy employees.

Once the bad actor has made contact, they will try to obtain personal information from the victim by using high-pressure tactics or threats. For example, they may claim that the victim’s bank account has been compromised and demand that they provide their login credentials to “verify” their identity. Or, they may pose as a government official, say that the victim’s taxes are overdue, and threaten legal action if they do not provide their Social Security number.

In some cases, vishing attacks can be very sophisticated. Criminals may do their research in advance and have detailed information about their targets, such as their name, job title, and company. This can make the victim feel like they are speaking to a legitimate person, and more likely to comply with their demands.

Is Vishing the Same as Phishing?

Vishing is similar to phishing, but there are some key differences. Both vishing and phishing are attempts to gain information by tricking the victim. However, with vishing, the attacker will use the phone instead of email to try to gain access to information.

Vishing can be harder to detect than phishing because the attacker is using a method that feels more personal. They may spoof the caller ID to make it look like they are calling from a legitimate company, or they may use social engineering techniques to try to get the victim to give them the information they want.

The Dangers of Vishing for Businesses

Vishing attacks can have serious consequences for businesses. If an employee falls for a vishing scam, the attacker may gain access to the company’s network and sensitive data. They may also use the employee’s credentials to commit fraud or steal money from the company. In some cases, vishing attacks can lead to ransomware infections, where the attacker encrypts the company’s data and demands a ransom to decrypt it.

Here are some of the most common dangers of vishing attacks:

• Compromised company data: If an employee’s credentials are compromised in a vishing attack, the attacker may gain access to the company’s network and sensitive data. This can include customer information, financial data, and trade secrets.
• Financial losses: Vishing attacks can lead to financial losses for businesses. For example, if an attacker obtains an employee’s login credentials, they may be able to transfer money out of the company’s bank account.
• Ransomware infections: In some cases, vishing attacks can lead to ransomware infections, where the attacker encrypts the company’s data and demands a ransom to decrypt it. This can cause significant disruption to the business and may result in the loss of important data.
• Reputational damage: Vishing attacks can also damage a company’s reputation. For example, if an attacker obtains customer data, the company may be required to disclose the breach to the affected individuals. This can damage the company’s reputation and result in financial losses.

How to Protect Your Business From Vishing Attacks

Vishing can be difficult to defend against, as attackers are constantly finding new ways to exploit employees. There are several steps that businesses can take to protect themselves from vishing attacks, including:

• Educating employees about the risks of vishing and reminding them never to give out sensitive information over the phone unless they are sure they know who they are talking to.
• Implementing a call verification system for high-risk calls, such as those from banks or other financial institutions.
• Making sure all employees know how to report suspicious calls or voicemails.
• Keeping anti-virus software up to date and ensuring all employees have access to it.

Tips for Detecting a Vishing Attack

Vishing attacks can devastate businesses of all sizes – but by being aware of the methods scammers use, you can help protect your employees (and your business) from becoming victims.

Some tips for detecting a vishing attack include:

• Being wary of unsolicited calls from unknown individuals
• Refusing to give out personal or financial information over the phone
• Being suspicious of requests for money or gift cards
• Refusing to click on links or open attachments from unknown senders.

As with any type of cyberattack, the best defense against vishing is awareness and education. By teaching your employees how to spot a vishing attempt, you can help protect your business from this devastating type of attack.

Responding to a Vishing Attack

The way you respond to any attack can mean the difference between a minor setback and a major disaster. If you believe your business has been the victim of a vishing attack, it’s important to take action immediately. Some steps you can take to respond to a vishing attack include:

• Notifying your employees: If you suspect that your employees have been targeted by a vishing attack, it’s important to let them know as soon as possible. This will help them be on the lookout for suspicious calls and take steps to protect their information.
• Contacting your bank or financial institution: If you suspect that your login credentials have been compromised, it’s important to contact your bank or financial institution immediately. They may be able to take steps to protect your account and prevent any unauthorized transactions from taking place.
• Monitoring your accounts: It’s also a good idea to monitor your company’s bank accounts and credit card statements for any suspicious activity. If you see any unusual charges, it’s important to report them to your bank or credit card company immediately.
• Reporting the incident: If you believe you’ve been the victim of a vishing attack, it’s important to report the incident to the appropriate authorities.

Wrap Up

Vishing is a serious threat to businesses of all sizes – but by taking steps to educate your employees and protect your business, you can help reduce the risk of becoming a victim. If you believe your business has been the target of a vishing attack, it’s important to take action immediately to minimize the damage. Be sure to implement strict security measures to protect your business from future attacks.

Four Steps You Must Take Today to Safeguard Your Business Against Phishing Attacks

Key Points in This Article:

• Businesses of sizes and industries must contend with phishing attacks which, if successful, can be devastating.
• Having a plan in place is crucial to mitigate the risk of phishing.
• Training employees, managing passwords, updating software, and securing mobile devices are steps you must take to safeguard your business.

No matter the size or industry, businesses face phishing attacks that have escalated in scope and sophistication. Successful phishing attacks can open a backdoor to a business’ corporate network, exposing proprietary, employee, and client information to cybercriminals. Moreover, phishing can give cybercriminals the access needed to deploy ransomware on a network.

Once in place, the software can encrypt files, allowing the cybercriminal to extort a ransom in exchange for restored access. Such ransomware attacks have cost companies anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions in ransoms, repairs, and reputational damage. And depending on the circumstances, businesses have also faced regulatory action for negligence when breaches have occurred.

Suppose you’re a business owner or executive who’s become increasingly aware of and concerned about the threat of phishing attacks (and cybersecurity in general). In that case, you can take some simple steps to mitigate your risk. While you will undoubtedly be targeted in this day and age, here’s what you need to do to safeguard your business.

Train Employees About Cybersecurity Continuously

Phishing is an attempt to manipulate individuals into revealing confidential or sensitive information. Within a business setting, cybercriminals send employees official-looking emails and texts designed to appear as if they’ve come from the business or one of its leaders. These messages will ask employees to reply with access credentials and, in some cases, their personal financial information.

If you look closely, there are often telltale signs that these messages are fraudulent, and many employees who recognize them will quickly report them to your IT department. But many employees remain unaware of the threat’s magnitude and how to detect phishing messages. When you train your employees to recognize suspicious emails (and other cybersecurity threats), you’ll substantially reduce the risk that one of your employees unintentionally provides cybercriminals access to your network.

However, cybercriminals remain hard at work devising new methods to attack businesses for illicit gain. You must schedule cybersecurity awareness training regularly to keep your employees up-to-date about new threats, reinforce the need for employee vigilance, and ensure new employees are up to speed.

Employ a Robust Password Policy

Sometimes, cybercriminals can compromise a network by guessing a password. Now, they don’t sit down, try to figure out probable passwords, and try them individually. They typically perform what’s known as a brute force attack, using sophisticated applications that automatically try multiple probable passwords. These applications often start with either commonly used credentials or credentials that are in use that a cybercriminal has obtained from a phishing attempt or prior breach.

You can minimize the likelihood of a brute force attack succeeding by requiring employees to create and use unique and complex passwords. Ideally, your password should not be one that can be easily guessed and should contain a list of numbers as well as uppercase, lowercase, and special characters. Passwords containing names, birthdays, and other information that can be guessed or publicly available present a security risk.

Further, you should require that employees change their passwords frequently. Indeed, all employees should be required to change their passwords in a breach. But when you require all passwords to be changed at periodic intervals, you’ll make it harder for cybercriminals to gain access.

Keep Software Up-to-Date

By keeping your security software applications up-to-date, you can be assured you have the latest cybersecurity protections in place. Of course, it’s also essential to ensure you have the right cybersecurity applications in place. You’ll need your IT staff to help you identify the right software applications to keep your network safe. But depending on their cybersecurity experience, you may need to retain the services of a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP). Because they work in the field 24/7, MSSPs have a breadth of experience and access to security planning and assessment tools that most in-house IT departments don’t. And because they work with businesses in your industry and region, they have practical insights into the threats your business may face.

Your security applications are not all you need to keep current. You also must keep your enterprise software current as well. When software companies retire specific applications, they no longer provide security updates. Cybercriminals may be able to exploit vulnerabilities in these programs to compromise your network. So you must upgrade or replace each software application on your network when the developer retires it.

Implement Strong Safeguards on Mobile Devices

With more companies operating in a remote-only or hybrid fashion, businesses have more devices accessing their network than ever. When the pandemic began, many businesses, in their haste to rapidly go remote, allowed employees to use their own devices and were somewhat laissez-faire in their approach to network security. And with new security vulnerabilities proliferating, many businesses paid a heavy price as their networks were breached.

Some businesses have yet to learn the lessons of those early pandemic days. It’s more critical than ever to ensure that offsite employees are accessing your network safely and securely and that when they do, they are doing so with devices with robust security measures. Moreover, your IT personnel must have the training, resources, and directive to monitor activity that may indicate cybercriminals are attempting to penetrate your network.

Employees often relax their guard when working from home or offsite and may inadvertently expose your network to threats if they access it using a personal device. If you employ a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy, make sure you’ve got a clear and comprehensive BYOD security policy in place that should cover how employees connect to your network, security measures to be placed on their devices, what device data will be monitored, and how that information will be used. A phishing attack aimed at obtaining an employee’s personal financial information could also net a cybercriminal access credentials to your network, so pairing your BYOD policy with regular training is crucial.

Even if you provide devices for employees to work remotely or have everyone working onsite, you still need a clear cybersecurity policy (including password protocols) outlining how employees use your devices. You must also provide regular training on the cybersecurity threats they may face. And you need up-to-date security and other software applications on those devices. By taking these steps, you can minimize the risk your business falls victim to a phishing attack. And if you do, these steps will also help mitigate the damage such an attack could cause.

Three Ways Managed Services Providers Can Help Your Business Grow

Key Points in This Article

• Working with an MSP can provide businesses with the necessary resources to grow.
• MSPs can help businesses save time by absorbing time-consuming yet fundamental tasks.
• They can also help companies save money by leveraging their insights and experience to increase productivity and offer specialized services where there are gaps in-house.

Business executives often think of Managed Service Providers (MSPs) in the context of their IT departments. They think that when they followed their CIO or IT director’s advice to hire one, they approved an IT solution to IT problems. But MSPs aren’t just technical resources to be leveraged when the network goes down. Reputable MSPs can offer businesses of all sizes across industries the keys they need to unlock their full growth potential. MSPs can leverage their IT expertise to help businesses save time and money, increase productivity, and earn revenue.

How can MSPs help businesses accelerate their growth? Here are three ways that working with a reputable provider can help you grow your business.

Improving Your Business’ Productivity

Working with an MSP, you can determine the best IT infrastructure to support your unique business. And not only can you design an operating environment that helps you maximize employee productivity while minimizing downtime and reducing the risk of system failures. Your MSP can usually manage your infrastructure, saving you time and ensuring your operations run smoothly.

Moreover, many MSPs offer round-the-clock coverage, while most IT departments cannot. MSPs can resolve an overnight network issue before the first employees arrive in the morning, whereas those employees in businesses without one will face some downtime in the morning. And the longer your systems are down, the more revenue and customers you may lose.

MSPs also work with multiple clients across industries. Accordingly, their staff has developed a wealth of knowledge about technical and business problems requiring IT solutions. Drawing on their experience, MSPs can recommend, help you plan, and deploy practical solutions that help you optimize your business’ productivity.

Further, many MSPs can take helpdesk management and other time-consuming fundamental tasks off your hands. In fact, they usually can do so more effectively and efficiently than you can. You will no longer consume valuable in-house staff time with a daily flood of mundane requests from your organization. Letting your MSP partner take over helpdesk management and other similar tasks allows your staff to work on higher-level activities, like strategic planning, revenue-driving IT activities, cybersecurity, and more.

Helping You Minimize Costs

An MSP can save your company the need to hire additional specialists in in-demand areas like cybersecurity. MSP staff can complement the work of your own in-house staff, filling in critical gaps where you have talent deficits. Further, MSPs typically bill using either a recurring monthly fee or a per-use fee model that allows you to adjust the services you need as necessary. If demand begins to surge, you can rapidly scale up the support and services you need. And if you no longer need a specific service, you can quickly remove it from your service contract.

When working with an MSP, businesses often find substantial cost savings in two additional areas. MSPs can often help businesses obtain the hardware and software they need at lower-than-market rates. That’s because MSPs maintain large supplier networks and are often able to secure preferred pricing. And because they can, they can help you obtain and deploy applications and solutions that you’ve long avoided but can substantially impact your business.

Second, many businesses often find that their MSP partners have identified seemingly simple tweaks to existing IT infrastructure that significantly reduce costs and save time. MSPs not only bring their experience working with other clients to bear but also bring an outsider’s perspective. Fresh eyes on a seemingly intractable problem or bottleneck often yield a solution.

Mitigating Risks and Threats

In today’s world, it’s no longer a matter of whether a cybercriminal will target a business but of when. And cyberattacks can be devastating, with the physical, financial, and reputational costs often high enough to put a company out of business. While preventing an attempt is impossible, you can radically reduce the risk of it being successful by designing and implementing the right cybersecurity plan.

But most in-house generalists don’t have the expertise, time, or resources to handle the most sophisticated threat actors. However, MSPs and Managed Security Service Providers (companies primarily offering managed cybersecurity services) can handle these threats. MSPs and MSSPs not only employ some of the best cybersecurity talents around. But because they work exclusively in the field, they can keep up-to-date with the threat landscape in a manner that in-house professionals cannot.

Moreover, MSPs and MSSPs usually have access to sophisticated security tools most businesses have not invested in. This combination of cybersecurity expertise, resources, and dedicated time is what you need to safeguard your business to the greatest extent possible. But cybercriminals are simply one threat.

All it takes is one accident, weather event, or system malfunction to result in potentially catastrophic data loss. And in the event an incident occurs, you must be able to ensure you restore your operations quickly. But many businesses don’t have a backup and disaster recovery plan. Others fail to check to ensure their data is backed up regularly. Still, others lack business continuity plans that can help them recover rapidly. And of those that do, many are inadequate and untested.

MSPs can help businesses put the plans they need in a crisis. Doing so can also free up staff to work on other projects. Moreover, when you let an MSP manage your infrastructure, you can insulate your business from the inherent risks of managing your own own-prem data center. An MSP can help you quickly return to total operational efficiency, which you need when disaster strikes.

These scenarios may not seem to have much to do with growth. But engaging in this kind of defensive work takes staff time and resources, which, when you work with an MSP, can be freed up to focus on revenue and productivity. Additionally, a crisis can quickly torpedo your growth if not properly managed. So it’s crucial to ensure you have the right plans in place to manage one.

Working with an MSP can help you increase business productivity by saving you time in multiple ways. When your in-house IT staff has more time, they can help you with product development, sales platform optimization, and other revenue-driving activities. They can also help other departments become more productive when they have the time to think through and deploy new technology solutions to longstanding problems. MSPs can also help you save money by reducing the need for large-scale hiring and optimizing existing resources. And they can help you safeguard your business, which faces more threats than ever.

What Your Business Needs to Know About Protecting Customer Data

Key Points:

• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sets standards for safeguarding customer information.
• The Safeguards Rule took effect in 2003 but was amended in 2021 after public comment to ensure the rule keeps pace with the current technology.
• The revised rule offers in-depth guidance for businesses — reflecting the core data security principles that all organizations under FTC’s jurisdiction must implement.
• The FTC Safeguards Rule applies to a specific class of financial institutions, such as mortgage companies, creditors, mortgage brokers, and debt collectors.
• The safeguard rules don’t apply to banks, federal credit unions, and loans and savings institutions.

Financial institutions under the jurisdiction of the FTC Safeguards Rule must implement new security controls to protect customer’s financial information. The rule took effect in 2003 but was amended in 2021 after public comment to ensure the rule keeps pace with current technology.

After revision, FTC imposed a deadline of December 9, 2022, with a penalty of $45,000 for violating the rule. The regulations may be news for non-banking financial institutions that are first-time subject to the FTC Safeguards Rule.

FTC Safeguards Rule At Its Core

The FTC Safeguards Rule outlines data security guidelines for financial institutions under its jurisdiction to protect customers’ information and ensure organizations keep pace with current technology.

The rule is part of the more significant 1999 Financial Modernization Act, which first required financial institutions to document how they handle sensitive customer information. After almost two decades, it’s safe to say the technology and data security rules have become ancient.

Following public comment, the FTC updated the Safeguard Rule in 2021 to offer better guidance for organizations. The affected financial organizations have to go over the updates of the FTC Safeguards Rule to ensure they remain compliant with the outlined expectation before the December 9, 2022, deadline.

Who Must Comply with The FTC Safeguards Rule

According to FTC, the rule applies to all financial institutions under FTC’s jurisdiction. The official FTC site defines a financial institution as any organization that engages in activities that are financial in nature or are incidental to such financial activities.

Some financial institutions that FTC gives as examples include:

• Mortgage companies
• Mortgage brokers
• Creditors
• Debt collectors
• Retailers that issue store credit cards
• Property appraisers
• Career counselors who work with clients in the finance industry
• Automobile dealership
• Businesses that print and sell checks to customers
• Organizations that regularly wire money to and from consumers
• Check cashing businesses
• Accountants and income tax return preparers
• Investment advisory company and credit counseling service
• Colleges and universities accepting Title IV funds

The FTC safeguards rule doesn’t apply to banks, federal credit unions, and savings and loan institutions.

What The FTC Safeguards Rule Require Organization to Do

FTC Safeguards requires organizations under its jurisdiction to comply with several requirements. The regulator outlines three elements for every information security program of financial institutions. Your security program must:

• Ensure the security and confidentiality of customer data
• Protect customer data against threats and hazards
• Prevent unauthorized access

The FTC Safeguards Rule outlines nine requirements for compliant security infrastructure. For an organization to be compliant, it must:

1. Assign a qualified individual to implement and supervise your organization’s information security program.
2. Execute a risk assessment to identify any vulnerability that can compromise the security and confidentiality of customer data.
3. Design and implement security controls to mitigate the risk identified through your risk assessment. The controls include access control, encrypting customer data in transit or at rest, implementing multifactor authentication, and secure data disposal.
4. Regularly monitor and test the efficacy of your security controls.
5. Train your staff to eliminate human weaknesses in your security programs.
6. Monitor your service providers to ensure they’re up to the task and meet your company’s security standards.
7. Keep your information security program current because the threat landscape is constantly evolving.
8. Create a written incident response plan.
9. Your qualified individual to report to your Board of Directors

What’s New With the FTC Safeguards Rule

The new amendments have many new requirements, including:

• Policies
• Reports
• Documentation
• Technical and training requirements

The technical requirements call for cybersecurity solutions that are FTC-compliant. Your organization needs to implement a security program with the following:

• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA):  The new FTC Safeguards Rule requires your organization to implement multifactor authentication for any individual accessing any information in your system. Your security system should provide users with more than one piece of evidence to verify their identity. MFA makes it harder for unauthorized people to access customers’ sensitive data.

• Penetration Testing and Vulnerability Assessments: FTC requires your security practices to include continuous monitoring, periodic penetration testing, and vulnerability assessments. The test checks for vulnerabilities in your system before hackers can exploit them. More importantly, the assessments test your cyber-defense capability and responsiveness.

• Monitor and Log User Activity & Access: Another requirement you must meet is implementing policies, controls, and procedures to monitor and log the activity of authorized users. Your organization should be able to detect unauthorized access to prevent the wrong use or tampering of customers’ data.

• Encryption: The Amended Rule requires your information security system to encrypt all customer data at rest and in transit. While data encryption is operationally difficult and costly, FTC has noted several low-cost and free encryption solutions for data in transit.

What is Monitoring & Activity Logging for FTC Safeguards Rule?

FTC says that you must implement a security solution that monitors when authorized users are accessing customer information on your system and detects any unauthorized or suspicious access to customer data.

One way to implement the requirement is to adopt a solution that collects, centralizes, and automatically analyzes your log data for users’ activities. The solution should detect unauthorized access, alert you in real-time, provide the next steps to respond, and allow easy access to historical log reports of user activity for investigations and audits.

The FTC Safeguards Mean Well For Your Business

Financial institutions under FTC should get into compliance the quickest way possible. While the new FTC Safeguards Rule demands a lot from your organization to be compliant, it’s for a good reason. The spike in security threats is concerning, and for every stakeholder in your organization, you need to do your part in managing risks.

How Safe is Microsoft Teams? Understanding the New Vulnerability Vectra Uncovered

Key Points in This Article

• Cybersecurity researchers at Vectra recently unearthed a new vulnerability in Microsoft Teams that may allow cyber criminals the means to cause considerable harm.
• The vulnerability requires cybercriminals to already have a certain level of access to your network or device.
• Rather than asking what you should do about Teams in light of this vulnerability, you should take every possible precaution and measure to keep your access credentials secure.

It’s a foregone conclusion these days that no matter what software application significant players like Microsoft roll out or security updates they provide, a new vulnerability will invariably be discovered. After all, a veritable army of hackers, cybercriminals, and even nation-state actors work continuously to identify these vulnerabilities for their own purposes. And these threat actors often think in creative ways that corporations are designed to, allowing them to find weaknesses that even experienced cybersecurity professionals overlook.

Understanding Software Application Vulnerabilities

When a software vulnerability is found in an application at a company like Microsoft, Apple, or Google, it quickly makes headlines in not just industry publications but also mainstream media. However, those working in cybersecurity know that such vulnerabilities are pretty common and that not all vulnerabilities pose the same level of risk. Nevertheless, those outside the field often quickly question whether widely used software is safe or whether it should be quickly discarded in favor of a new, unidentified, yet presumed safer measure.

Microsoft Teams recently made some headlines when cybersecurity researchers at Vectra unearthed a new vulnerability in the application. And because of the headlines, it’s likely some business leaders may have found themselves asking their CIOs and IT directors whether Teams was still safe to use.

When such headlines occur, influential IT professionals likely have taken the time to understand the nature of this vulnerability and assess the risks it may pose before making recommendations or taking action. Doing so can help save them from acting precipitously by spending time and money moving to a competing software without determining if a simple patch or other safety measures might eliminate the risk.

So what is the nature of the vulnerability? How much of a risk does it pose? And is Microsoft Teams still safe for businesses like yours to use?

The Microsoft Teams’ Vulnerability Vectra Uncovered

Vectra researchers realized that the Teams holds user authentication tokens in plain text on their desktop devices. When you install and use the Microsoft Teams client on Windows, Mac, or Linux, those credentials can be found on your device even when Teams is closed. A hacker or cybercriminal who has access to your system could use these credentials to access Teams, Outlook, and SharePoint, among other applications, modify files, steal data, and compromise your security.

Moreover, these credentials allow a hacker to take any action you might through the Team interface, bypassing the need for multi-factor authentication. For example, a cybercriminal who accesses the account of a C-suite leader through this Teams’ vulnerability could hijack their Outlook account and steal proprietary information from the business leader’s email account or SharePoint document library.

Cybercriminals could also use their newfound access credentials to send phishing emails to employees throughout the organization. These phishing efforts, coming from the email account of a company leader, could be designed to encourage employees to take actions that further compromise network security, such as downloading malware or ransomware. These are just two possibilities. An enterprising cybercriminal could easily cripple a business or organization in many other ways.

Vectra initially discovered this vulnerability after one of its customers noted that Teams users cannot remove deactivated accounts through the Teams UT when their user account is disabled. Vectra began investigating and learned that Teams’ storage of user credentials was not secure. The company shared its discovery of the vulnerability with Microsoft in August 2022. Perhaps surprising to some, Microsoft did not immediately set about patching this exploit. They confirmed that it could pose a threat and indicated they would address it in a future Teams update.

What Relative Risk Does This Vulnerability Pose?

This response may seem to downplay the possible risk and strike some as cavalier. But while this vulnerability allows cybercriminals with only read access to your system to gain your Teams credentials, the truth is if a cybercriminal gains access to an employee’s account, there are many other ways they can leverage that access at the expense of the business or organization. And it remains incumbent on employees in every department (not just IT) to ensure that authentication credentials don’t fall into the wrong hands.

Businesses and organizations must provide their employees with regular, practical, and current cybersecurity awareness training to ensure that all employees do their part to protect their employers. Employees must understand how to identify and report suspicious activity they encounter, take steps to secure their devices, and avoid downloading applications that could house malware and viruses. They must understand and follow their employer’s cyber security policies without fail to keep their account credentials out of the hands of third parties.

CIOs and IT professionals must develop, maintain, and refine strong cybersecurity policies that cover the entirety of the organization. And they must ensure that all areas comply and that no shortcuts are taken. That means eliminating legacy practices like granting certain users local admin privileges to cut down on help desk requests. It also means continuously testing existing measures to pinpoint vulnerabilities before third parties. A single exploit left unidentified and unaddressed can prove catastrophic. One recent study holds that the average cyberattack costs a company $200,000, which can be enough to put a small business out of business.

So, while Microsoft’s response may seem to downplay the risk, businesses and organizations most at risk from this vulnerability are those with poor fundamental cybersecurity measures in place already. And while business and IT leaders should be aware of this vulnerability, it does not make Microsoft Teams more unsafe to use. Those who are concerned about it should take every available measure to protect their network and device access credentials from falling into the wrong hands before giving any thought to switching platforms. Because no matter which platform you select, if a cybercriminal obtains usernames and passwords, everything is vulnerable.