Text Message Scams

Don’t click on the link you received about unpaid tolls. It’s likely a scam.

Excerpt from: If You Get This Text Message, It’s Probably a Scam.

Unpaid toll scams are on the rise, according to the FBI. The agency has received more than 2,000 complaints since March. Unpaid toll scams are classified as smishing, whereby bad actors use text messages and pretend to be a part of a company to extract your personal information.

Toll road scam texts often convey a false sense of urgency. This tricks you into acting quickly before you even consider the possibility that it may be a scam.

“Scared people moving quickly make poor decisions, which is exactly what a scammer wants,” Goerlich said. “If a message makes you feel rushed or afraid, trust your intuition and stop responding.”

Read the full article: https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/identity-theft/if-you-get-this-text-message-its-probably-a-scam/

Wolf’s Additional Thoughts

Take a beat, take a moment, center yourself, and click from a place of calm. That’s my security awareness advice. While the tactics have changed over the decades, the one thing scams have in common is scaring people into move action. So give yourself a time to think.

This post is an excerpt from a press article. To see other media mentions and press coverage, click to view the Media page or the News category. Do you want to interview Wolf for a similar article? Contact Wolf through his media request form.

Security leaders are expected to defend their organizations against existing and emerging threats. Here are some tactics they can use to crack down on the enemy.

Excerpt from: 9 Ways CISOs Can Stay Ahead of Bad Actors

It is often said that CISOs need to be right all the time and bad actors must only be right once. According to Wolfgang Goerlich, faculty member at independent cybersecurity research and advisory firm IANS Research, that mindset is counterproductive.

“That’s not the case. The criminals are fast, they’re strong, but there are things we can do. I’ve always started with threat intelligence [because] I want to know what the criminals are doing, what their tactics and procedures are. I want to know some good ways to stop them in ways that don’t interfere with my organizations,” says Goerlich. “Security is only as good as the last time you checked, so we will do tabletop exercises, drills, red team exercises and test all those ways a criminal would move through our environment, and ensure we have multiple ways to stop and catch them.”

There are many other things CISOs are doing to stay a step ahead. The following are some examples.

Read the full article: https://www.informationweek.com/cyber-resilience/9-ways-cisos-can-stay-ahead-of-bad-actors

This post is an excerpt from a press article. To see other media mentions and press coverage, click to view the Media page or the News category. Do you want to interview Wolf for a similar article? Contact Wolf through his media request form.

Modern life means the proliferation of passwords. From banking to BBC iPlayer, nearly every website or application requires creating a password. But remembering multiple passwords is cumbersome and using the same easy-to-remember password for every application is a security nightmare. This is where password managers have come into their own

Excerpt from: Best Password Managers in the UK

Things to Consider When Buying a Password Manager

Security features and encryption. “It’s important to determine whether your passwords are safeguarded with multi-factor authentication and if the protection is structured so that only you have access to your data,” says Wolfgang Goerlich, faculty member at cybersecurity research and advisory firm, IANS Research. “This is commonly known as zero-knowledge architecture, which is a great way of saying that the vendor cannot access my passwords and secrets.”

Data backup and sync. For business users with “higher demands on the availability and integrity of their password manager”, Goerlich says that it is important to look into data recovery options, especially if the product is cloud-based: “If the cloud becomes unavailable, the password managers need to be able to continue to function.

Read the full article: https://www.usnews.com/uk/360-reviews/privacy/password-managers

This post is an excerpt from a press article. To see other media mentions and press coverage, click to view the Media page or the News category. Do you want to interview Wolf for a similar article? Contact Wolf through his media request form.

Passwordless authentication can make a zero-trust environment even more secure. Here’s what state and local governments need to know.

Excerpt from: How Passwordless Authentication Supports Zero Trust

State and local government agencies carry the heavy burden of collecting and managing large amounts of sensitive data to bring essential services to citizens. Naturally, they want to be on the cutting edge of cybersecurity, which is where the zero-trust security model comes in. And now, we’re seeing an innovation that could bolster zero trust’s already formidable defenses: passwordless authentication.

“When we think about zero trust, we want to regularly assess trust and evaluate everything,” Goerlich says. “If we’re constantly going to users and having them put in codes, PINs and passwords, we’re going to get a lot of resistance. So, I think many roadmaps that are successful for state and local governments pursuing zero trust are introducing passwordless as a way to reduce user friction while driving up assurance around identity.”

Passwordless authentication and zero trust work together. An agency may check a user’s fingerprint or face or have a user enter a PIN, but an agency that employs zero trust will also make sure the user is on the right computer in the right location and is behaving in a way that’s expected.

“This is the future of multifactor: implementing the strongest possible factors and addressing concerns around phishing and other common attacks,” Goerlich says.

How Can State and Local Agencies Implement Passwordless Authentication?

Read the full article: https://statetechmagazine.com/article/2024/02/how-passwordless-authentication-supports-zero-trust-perfcon

This post is an excerpt from a press article. To see other media mentions and press coverage, click to view the Media page or the News category. Do you want to interview Wolf for a similar article? Contact Wolf through his media request form.

According to tech experts who say that if you slice and dice your email addresses the right way, you’ll not only declutter your digital life, but you will protect yourself better when it comes to phishing and financial scams.

Excerpt from: Multiple email address for different functions beefs up security.

How many email addresses do you have? If you’re like most Americans, you have two – personal and work. But there’s a large number – 28% – who have four or more email addresses. The privacy and scam experts that ConsumerAffairs spoke to were pretty much in agreement that the magic number is four or five email addresses and they’re shoulder to shoulder on what those addresses should be, too.

Wolfgang Goerlich  insists a separate shopping — including for subscriptions and newsletters — email account is an absolute must. “For example, a shipping scam or invoicing scam sent to an email address not used for shopping is easily spotted,” he told ConsumerAffairs.

“Say one of your email addresses gets compromised because of clicking on a scam, or falling for a phishing email, the criminal wouldn’t be able to get into your bank if it’s through a separate address. And when a website or app gets breached, and they often do, it helps to keep things separate.”

Read the full article: https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/multiple-email-address-for-different-functions-beefs-up-security-121423.html

Wolf’s Additional Thoughts

My recommendation is breaking email into: personal, professional, shopping, banking and finance, dating and relationships. Take that last category. People have been embarrassed, harassed, or even blackmailed when dating sites were compromised and their work email addresses were tied to those sites and leaked.

For the longest time, maintaining separate email addresses was a bit of a pain. You had to create them, remember to check them, and periodically clear out the inboxes. Today the major email providers make it easier to maintain several accounts. Moreover, on phones, it is easy to create separate email addresses for practically every website. Apple iPhone can do this natively with “hide my email” and Google Android devices can do this with third-party apps.

It’s never been easier to maintain a separation of email, and arguably, it’s never been more important to do so.

Nearly 90% organizations have begun embracing zero-trust security, but many still have a long way to go, according to a report by multinational technology company Cisco. “The more organizations know about zero trust, the less they feel competent in zero trust,” Goerlich adds. “The more they learn, the more they realize they need to go further.”

Excerpt from 9 in 10 organizations have embraced zero-trust security globally.

“What often happens to security concepts that begin as buzzwords and capture momentum is they fade off into business as usual,” Goerlich says. “What we’re seeing is people no longer asking, ‘Are you doing zero trust?’ It’s, ‘Are you securing this new line of business? Are you securing our mergers and acquisitions? Are you protecting us against ransomware? Are you enabling the business to keep up to changing market demands and changes in the threat landscape?”

“Now that we have the outcomes identified,” Goerlich continues, “we can apply the appropriate technologies and appropriate pillars to achieve those outcomes. What we’re going to continue to see is zero-trust principles becoming fundamental security principles. As we move forward, good security is good security, and good security will include some of these zero-trust principles baked into every layer.”

Read the full article: https://www.csoonline.com/article/1249027/9-in-10-organizations-have-embraced-zero-trust-security-globally.html

“Good security first delivers a business outcome and then, and only then, as a result, increases security,” noted J. Wolfgang Goerlich, advisory CISO at Cisco Secure.

Excerpt from In the Line of Fire: Understanding and Conquering Cybersecurity Risks