We all go about our day working, or on our downtime surfing the web. Whether we’re doing research for work, booking our next vacation, shopping, looking for funny videos, or making a few bets with latest online gambling craze, we’re online a lot. And the worst part is we don’t even think of who’s behind us looking??!!
Many of us think we are safe because we downloaded antivirus software, or we don’t go to ‘THOSE’ websites. What you, like most people don’t realize is that behind most of the websites or apps you use, there is a little piece of you that you’ve just exposed unknowingly. Ever wonder why when you scroll through your favourite social media you just happen to see ads for things that you looked at on a website somewhere else? I know it’s scary to think that you looked at that shiny new product on a retailers website, and now it shows up in your social media feed!!??
I admit I have very few social media accounts, but the ones I do use, have such a keen sense of what I’m looking to buy. Now that is the much less scary exposure than the one I want you to be aware of, THE DARK WEB! What is The Dark Web? It’s a marketplace where thousands of hackers go everyday to purchase your credentials and private data, credit cards, IT assets, any and all you personal information.
As we go about our online life we don’t think about who or what could be lurking behind us taking our information and leaving us EXPOSED! Recently I had a client ask us to do a forensic audit on a few users, email addresses and hardware. What we found was not what they expected, and this was not because there was any suspected inappropriate activity, just an exercise in safety and an interest in possible exposures.
Being a top level Cybersecurity company with a team of experts that bar none are the best, we started digging. First step was to dig into the Dark Web, we found usernames, passwords, exposed in multiple places and on both work and personal websites (visited on work machines). Then we dug further using the complete toolbox that our team has and discovered exposed company credit cards, stakeholder credentials, home addresses, phone numbers, etc. on many websites. None of this was done in any malicious way by the users, but simply by just going online and not really thinking anyone was looking over their shoulder.
Next came the hardware, what was found made me cringe and start questioning my own personal computer. On one machine we found a large number of Trojan viruses, Malware and close to 200 Malicious Cookies, all from what an end user thought were safe websites. And in case you are wondering just 1 Trojan can give multiple hackers complete access to your computer. That means all the data on your computer is now available to them, and likely for sale on the Dark Web.
So how EXPOSED are you?
Check out the link below kindly provided by our Security Team Lead Sanjeev Multani, and click on the bubbles to see the articles related to each.
https://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/worlds-biggest-data-breaches-hacks/
Are there way to protect yourself, simply put yes! Can we help you scrub and clean up some of your exposed data, yes! But more important we can help you avoid most of these exposures. With software, hardware and a big box of tools we can implement along with best in practice policies. We can help make sure you stay safe while going about your day to day work, and keep your most valuable asset safe, your data, your client and employee data.