I hope you had a great July fourth holiday!
Did you look at any advertising online or through emails sent to you?
Did you click on any political ads?
Did you stop and think about the “click” before actually clicking?
With all the artificial intelligence and targeted advertising out there, advertisers and scammers have access to billions of passwords, emails and bits of information scattered out there on you. These bits of information are put together to build a profile of you or your business and then you are targeted with specific and tempting tidbits. Then, unfortunately, when you click on a link, you will get either a great buy or get scammed and lose all your personal information.
Black Friday sales are coming up soon along with lots of political ads. The goal of the scammer when they create these type ads is to spark some type of emotional reaction that makes you eager to click on the link or call a phone number without giving it much thought. Before you realize it, you have clicked the link or called the number, and have now given the scammers the keys to your kingdom. They now have access to all your information (bank accounts, credit cards, usernames and passwords for all your accounts).
How can you tell the difference between a legitimate email and a scammers email? The answer is you often can’t without hypervigilance.
The Importance of Prevention To Protect Your Business…
I told my wife, there are actual shops that do this, maybe not in quite the flamboyant way as the “The Beekeeper” movie, (now out on Amazon Prime) but the results are the same. Thousands of people and businesses are scammed out their hard-earned money every day by these shops all over the world. Their job is to get your personal and business information and to get as much money as quickly as possible and then disappear.
One of the main parts of my business is to stop problems before they happen. We have several programs we utilize, backed with experts from the NSA (National Security Administration) and Homeland Security.
If the people in the movie had spent a little bit of money for prevention and our expertise, the character Jason Statham portrayed could have kept tending his bees in peace and a lot of character’s lives would have been saved.
Click here to see a couple of examples of how we helped a clients deal with scammers.
And don’t think your business is too small. Scammers and hackers will try to attack you both personally and professionally regardless of your size or who you are. They will and they do.
How You Can Guard Against Scammers and Hackers…
Part of what we do in our business is helping people in the aftermath of being hacked. We train them on how to:
- Change passwords to create more secure systems;
- Explain what 2 factor authentication (2fa) is and how to use it;
- Spot hackers and scammers before any damage can be done;
- Harden and secure their systems by installing security software, setting up physical firewalls and decreasing vulnerabilities in their systems to prevent additional problems.
- Have us install a “zero trust” browser extension. The one we use is called ConcealBrowse. It uses AI and not just a list of good/bad sites. It is cheap and effective. It protects end users by warning about bad sites and “sandboxes” the sites so they cannot infiltrate your computer.
Our national database on good/bad sites has become increasingly weakened over time, meaning scammers can now work around the good/bad site list. Click here to read the article.
Clients can also contact us if they receive a suspicious call, or if their computer locks up and starts blaring that they have been compromised. Most of the time, we can get rid of the problem before the client is damaged.
Prevention is the key. Think now, protect now, so you can be prepared and protected when you or your employees are in a distracted moment.
If you are interested in learning more about securing your computer systems send an email to jnay@jimnay.com. You can also call or text us at 615-443-4842.
All the best,
Jim Nay
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