Category: The Authorities

The government says Cyber Essentials helps your business to guard against the most common cyber threats and demonstrate your commitment to cyber security

Self-Help for Cyber Essentials

The guide explains how to:

Secure your Internet connection
Secure your devices and software
Control access to your data and services
Protect from viruses and other malware
Keep your devices and software up to date

The Three levels of Engagement

Not everyone has the time or resources needed to develop a full-on cyber security system. So Cyber Essentials has been designed to fit with whatever level of commitment you are able to sustain. There are three levels of engagement:

The simplest is to familiarise yourself with cyber security terminology, gaining enough knowledge to begin securing your IT.
Basic Cyber Essentials certification.
Cyber Essentials Plus certification.

1. Self Help

The self-assessment option gives you protection against a wide variety of the most common cyber attacks. This is important because vulnerability to simple attacks can mark you out as target for more in-depth unwanted attention from cyber criminals and others.

2. Certified Cyber Security

Cyber Essentials Certificate £300 approx. (+VAT)

Certification gives you peace of mind that your defences will protect against the vast majority of common cyber attacks simply because these attacks are looking for targets which do not have the Cyber Essentials technical controls in place.

In the process of obtaining Cyber Essentials Certification is simple, you can opt to buy as much or as little help as you need from the company you choose to certify you.

Cyber Essentials shows you how to address those basics and prevent the most common attacks.

Reassure customers that you are working to secure your IT against cyber attack
Attract new business with the promise you have cyber security measures in place
You have a clear picture of your organisation’s cyber security level
Some Government contracts require Cyber Essentials certification

3. Cyber Essentials Plus Certificate

The cost for this is only available on application.

It has all the benefits of Cyber Essentials PLUS your cyber security is verified by independent experts.

Cyber attacks come in many shapes and sizes, but the vast majority are very basic in nature, carried out by relatively unskilled individuals. They’re the digital equivalent of a thief trying your front door to see if it’s unlocked. The advice is designed to prevent these attacks.

Cyber Essentials Plus still has the Cyber Essentials trademark simplicity of approach, and the protections you need to put in place are the same, but this time the verification of your cyber security is carried out independently by your Certification Body.

The more rigorous nature of the certification may mean you need to buy additional support from your Certification Body.

Cyber Essentials and Government Contracts

If you would like to bid for central government contracts which involve handling sensitive and personal information or the provision of certain technical products and services, you will require Cyber Essentials Certification.

April 4, 2018

Regulator to Protect Victims of Payment Scams

Authorised Push Payment (APP) scams are where people are conned into authorising their bank to make payment to a fraudster.

The Payments Systems Regulator (PSR) is planning for new protections for consumers, from APP scams, to be in place from September 2018, as an industry code.

The Regulator ran a consultation from November 2017 to January 2018, to give people the opportunity to provide feedback on the regulator’s plans. It gathered opinions from the payments industry, consumer groups and individuals to make sure the PSR could understand how best to protect people from APP scams.

The Changes

Once the industry code is in place, it will be publicly consulted on, for refinement in early 2019 and the regulator expects that it will continue to evolve to ensure preventative measures are kept up to date.

The PSR is also bringing consumer and industry representatives together to establish a dedicated steering group. Led by an independent chair appointed by the PSR, the group will ensure the contingent reimbursement model is designed in the best way to minimise the number of scams in the future and protect victims of scams.

Paul Smith, Head of Policy at the PSR, said:

“This is about making a positive difference for people to protect them from APP scams – where people are tricked into sending money to a fraudster. The banks have already made some changes but, from September 2018, this industry code will see better protections available to everyone. We expect the code to evolve over time to make sure methods of preventing APP scams are up to date.”

“This is a complex piece of work and we have set a challenging timeline, but it is essential we see, as soon as possible, a model that is effective in protecting people.”

Good progress by the regulator.

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March 30, 2018

Scammers Targeting Elderly Are Caught

A Canadian con man who was caught on video bragging about stealing from the elderly was among 200 people charged by US Authorities with defrauding seniors.

Andrew John Thomas boasted about his sweepstakes scheme at a 2016 conference for postal scammers in Whistler, British Columbia, authorities said.

“My ability to whore my beautiful talent to sell this s— to people who don’t need it. It’s hard to be, it’s hard to be proud of it, but well I’m good at it.” said Thomas.

Authorities say Thomas masterminded the swindle of more than $4.5 million annually by duping senior citizens into believing they had won large sums of money. He targeting elderly Americans typically notifiying them via mail that they’d won a sweepstakes prize and all they needed to do to claim it was to pay a processing fee and money for taxes.

The mailings instructed recipients to return a response card with a processing fee in order to accept the bogus winnings. They received no money — only more solicitations. While many stopped sending money after realizing they had been duped, others continued to do so in hopes of claiming the prize.

U.S. law enforcement officials announced what they labelled as the largest ever fraud enforcement action involving elderly Americans, charging more than 200 people and bringing civil actions against dozens more.

Agents from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, (the enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service), executed search warrants at 14 locations that some of the same fraudsters have run for years.

Officers from the Vancouver Police Department in Canada served dozens of search warrants as part of the enforcement action.

This was a clearly a well organised and effective take-down of a lot of scammers by co-ordinated action between US agencies and the Canadian Police.

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March 21, 2018

UK Government Cyber Essentials 10 Step Plan

This is a summary of the UK Government 10 step plan for Cyber Essentials, which is designed for organisations looking to protect themselves in cyberspace.

1. Risk Management

Embed an appropriate risk management regime across the organisation. This should be supported by an empowered governance structure, which is actively supported by the board and senior managers. These should aim to ensure that all employees, contractors and suppliers are aware of the approach, how decisions are made, and any applicable risk boundaries.

2. Secure Configuration

Identify baseline technology builds and processes for ensuring configuration management can greatly improve the security of systems. Develop a strategy to remove or disable unnecessary functionality from systems, and to quickly fix known vulnerabilities.

3. Network Security

The connections from your networks to the Internet, and other partner networks, expose your systems and technologies to attack. By creating and implementing some simple policies and appropriate architectural and technical responses, you can reduce the chances of these attacks succeeding. Your organisation’s networks may use of mobile or remote working, and cloud services, makes defining a fixed network boundary difficult.

4. Managing User Privileges

All users should be provided with a reasonable (but minimal) level of system privileges and rights needed for their role. The granting of highly elevated system privileges should be carefully controlled and managed.

5. User Education and Awareness

It’s important that security rules and the technology provided enable users to do their job as well as help keep the organisation secure. This can be supported by a systematic delivery of awareness programmes and training that deliver security expertise as well as helping to establish a security-conscious culture.

6. Incident Management

Invest in establishing effective incident management policies and processes to help to improve resilience, support business continuity, improve customer and stakeholder confidence and potentially reduce any impact.

7. Malware Prevention

Malicious software, or malware is an umbrella term to cover any code or content that could have a malicious, undesirable impact on systems. The risk may be reduced by developing and implementing appropriate anti-malware policies as part of an overall ‘defence in depth’ approach.

8. Monitoring

System monitoring provides a capability that aims to detect actual or attempted attacks on systems and business services. Monitoring allows you to ensure that systems are being used appropriately in accordance with organisational policies.

9. Removable Media Controls

Removable media provide a common route for the introduction of malware and the accidental or deliberate export of sensitive data. You should be clear about the business need to use removable media and apply appropriate security controls to its use.

10.Home and Mobile Working

Mobile working and remote system access offers great benefits, but exposes new risks that need to be managed. You should establish risk based policies and procedures that support mobile working or remote access to systems that are applicable to users, as well as service providers.

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/10-steps-cyber-security has further information.

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March 16, 2018

UK Government Phishing Attacks

A phishing attack is when criminals create fake websites that look like well-known websites such as Marks and Spencer or HMRC or British Gas etc. They use the fake websites to get your confidential information.

The statistics below refer to sites that pretend to be government.

Top 10 Government ‘Brands’

Brand No of phishing sites No of attack groups Availability hours

HM Revenue & Customs 16,064 2,466 10

Gov.uk 1,541 241 15

TV Licensing 172 93 5

DVLA 107 53 11

Government Gateway 46 22 6

Crown Prosecution Service 43 26 15

Student Loans Company 19 11 17

Student Finance Direct 13 3 3

British Broadcasting Corporation 8 7 35

The availability (in hours) of an attack is the total amount of time the phishing site is available from when the Netcraft service first becomes aware of the attack through to when it is finally taken down.

Phishing

When a phishing site is identified that is pretending to be a UK government brand, the hosting provider is asked to take the site down.

For example:- a fraudster using an email address onlinehmrctax @ gov.co.uk. and a matching website. That is intended to deceive the user into thinking this is a real HMRC site. Not all phishing sites use domains like this and many are hosted in areas of legitimate sites that have been compromised by the criminal.

A single attack can involve multiple spoof sites, hosted on the same server. If there are many phishing URLs in a single attack, they can easily skew statistics through the responsiveness or otherwise of the hosting provider.

Over the last calendar year, 18, 067 HMG-related phishing sites have been removed.

For comparison, in the previous 6 months , the volume was 19,443 sites.. It’s clear that here are fewer HMG-related phishing takedowns in 2017 and the trend is generally downward. Given how the service is driven, it’s reasonable to assume that it sees a relatively constant percentage of the global phishing and so this strongly suggests that there has been less HMG-related phishing this year than last.

However, it is very likely that this work has had a direct impact on the viability of criminal phishing targeting HMG brands, making them less lucrative and therefore less likely to be used.

It’s obvious from the table that the vast majority of HMG-related phishing attacks continue to use the HMRC brand. That’s unsurprising given that most adults have a relationship with them and everyone would welcome a tax refund.

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March 14, 2018

How Common Are Data Breaches

The Proportion of Businesses That Have Had Breaches in 2017

	Overall	Micro Firms	Small Firms	Medium Firms	Large Firms	Admin/ Real Estate
% experiencing a cyber security breach or attack in 2017	24	17	33	51	65	39

Businesses that invest more in cyber security have more breaches than businesses that invest less. This may seem counter intuitive but it’s partly due to businesses that realise they are more at risk such as finance operations then investing more whereas businesses where the online presence is minimal feel less at risk and invest less. There is also the assumption that businesses that invest more in cyber security will be better at identifying such breaches.

Types of Breaches/Attacks

Viruses, spyware or malware	68%
Other impersonating organisation in emails or online	32%
Denial of service attacks	15%
Hacking	13%
Money stolen electronically	13%
Breaches from personally owned devices	8
Personal information stolen	8
Breaches from externally hosted web services	8
Unlicensed or stolen software downloaded	8
Money stolen via fraud emails or websites	6
Software damaged or stolen	5
Breaches on social media	3
Intellectual property theft	1

You can see that attacks of various kinds are very common. All businesses must take steps to protect against data breaches and all common forms of cyber-attack