Do You Recognize These 3 Cyberscams?

Case #2 A client emails your staff member and mentions that he expects to receive a year-end bonus. Your staff member continues the conversation on both email and over the phone. In January, the client now has the funds and emails the staffer requesting the wire instructions for sending the money to his managed account. Your client receives a swift return email with the wire instructions, but the instructions route the money to the fraudster's account.

In this case, a fraudster gained access to your staff member's email account. Further, the client ultimately sent the funds without verbally confirming the wire information with your firm.

Case #3 A member of your staff receives an email from a friend asking her to review their resume. Your employee clicks on the attachment thinking it is a standard document program, but nothing appears to happen. She thinks there's something wrong with the file and replies to the email asking the friend to resend the resume.

Later, the staffer tries to open a file that she had been working on, which won't open as it says it has been encrypted and a password is required … but she didn't make those security changes. This is a classic ransomware attack, which also has encrypted and locked you out of every file that your employee had access to, including files located on your firm's servers.

Do you pay the ransom or do you use a trusted backup to retrieve the files prior to being encrypted? This is just the beginning of the work. You also have to ensure the ransomware is removed from the employee's computer and any other location on the firm's network.

Given these three real-life examples of successful cyber attacks, could you see your firm being a victim as well?

Dan Skiles is the president of Shareholders Service Group in San Diego. He can be reached at [email protected].