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At the core of the Keyrunon platform lies a powerful Back-office system for robust Trading and Risk management along with full PAM, CRM, Financial Reporting, and Bonus functionalities across all channels and devices. Keyrunon offers its iGaming Platform to government-licensed betting operators along with full training, 24×7 support, software maintenance, and flexible customization service

The Challenge

• Provide highly dense, high-performance compute and storage to support current and future business operations
• Must be Highly Available and Redundant
• Must provide capacity for the next generation in gaming software
• Must be highly secure

Client: Keyrunon Limited

WebSite: https://www.keyrunon.com/

Industry: Software development / Trading / Gaming Platforms

Delivery Date: 1^st October 2021

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COMIT is happy to announce that we are now certified to provide integration services for NetApp E-Series systems.

 

This certification confirms our ability to plan, deploy, integrate, and assess NetApp® solutions in a NetApp data fabric.

 

Our NetApp Certifications

Implementation Services Certified
E-Series
HCI
ONTAP
Integration Services Certified
E-Series

Professional Services Certified
ONTAP SAN

Support Services Certified

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The technology that lays the foundation for remote work, hyperconverged infrastructure, has long been an ideal way for organizations to deliver key workloads such as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), IT for remote offices and branch offices (ROBO) and for companies to drive datacenter modernization. Azure Stack HCI delivers on these customer needs with the innovation of Azure integration. With our cloud-native approach, our goal is to help customers realize higher value HCI through quick deployment and integration that leverages familiar management and tools with flexible Azure subscription pricing.

Customers and partners benefit from Azure Stack HCI innovations today
With the general availability of Azure Stack HCI today, we’ve taken the great feedback customers provided in preview to deliver a full-featured offering that includes centralized management, stretch clustering, built in hybrid capabilities, and Azure Arc integration. Our approach is resonating with customers and partners alike, including integrated system partners DataON, Dell Technologies, and Lenovo. Customers across many verticals, including Benenden Schools, Bradley Legal, the Cherokee County School District, Florida State Medical College of Medicine, and Hendrick Motorsports have already seen success with Azure Stack HCI through participation in preview and have achieved business value from Azure Stack HCI in driving early production deployment for multiple use cases including ROBO, database workloads, and datacenter modernization in general. Read the customer experience blog.

Do more with the new Azure Stack HCI and integrated systems
The innovations delivered by Azure Stack HCI open a wide range of customer scenarios. For example, simplifying hybrid with native Azure integration provides visibility of the clusters in the Azure Portal for hybrid management. Another key innovation is the newly built-in stretched clustering capabilities to easily enhance a customer disaster recovery strategy. See this technical video to learn more.

As customers are looking to minimize their time to value when deploying new infrastructure, Microsoft has worked with its partners to deliver a new integrated system experience for Azure Stack HCI as one of the form factors available. These integrated systems are shipping as pre-racked, with software, hardware, and firmware pre-installed and a simple deployment GUI. The new Azure Stack HCI full stack updates feature is integrated with each of the partner systems, bringing one click orchestration when new features or security updates need to be applied to the cluster. The system administrator is always in control, and always gets the latest features and validated full-stack updates.

Partner ecosystem
Today’s general availability also marks multiple integrated systems from our trusted partners such as DataON, Dell Technologies, and Lenovo. These Azure Stack HCI integrated systems have been co-engineered for enterprise-ready reliability and simplicity.

“As a partner that made the “Microsoft choice” we are bullish about the new simplicity and ease of use that Azure Stack HCI integrated systems bring to our customers. We have worked hand in hand with Microsoft to deliver a seamless experience on our new DataON AZS product line with DataON MUST Pro for Windows Admin Center. MUST Pro simplifies deployment and updating on Azure Stack HCI with minimal disruption to your hybrid cloud infrastructure. We believe that all industry verticals can benefit from the innovation delivered by such a system.” —Howard Lo, Vice President, Sales & Marketing, DataON

“With a long-standing history of bringing products to market with Microsoft, we are introducing the Dell EMC Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI built on trusted Dell EMC PowerEdge server technology. As part of our industry leading hyperconverged portfolio, this all-in-one, jointly engineered system delivers an Azure hybrid cloud consumption experience for customers with integrated deployment and full-stack automated lifecycle management.” —Jon Siegal, Vice President of Product Marketing, Dell Technologies

“Lenovo is looking forward to bringing Microsoft Azure Stack HCI integrated form factor to Lenovo’s most popular servers and Edge server lineup. Our joint partnership with Microsoft delivers a new hyperconverged infrastructure solution that helps our mutual customers accelerate their cloud journey. The hybrid capabilities and seamless integration with Azure is a perfect complement to the Lenovo ThinkAgile MX product line.” —Kamran Amini, Vice President and General Manager, Server, Storage, and Software Defined Infrastructure, Lenovo Data Center Group

Another great way to deploy Azure Stack HCI is using the Intel Select Solution offerings that deliver lots of flexibility.

“Azure Stack HCI reimagines hybrid cloud for enterprises with newfound simplicity in how IT can access Azure services based on what makes sense for their business, whether that is onpremises or in the cloud. The Intel Select Solutions for Azure Stack HCI are market-ready solutions delivered by a breadth of partners, extensively tested and performance verified to further simplify deployment while giving customers the scale and efficiency needed for a modern infrastructure to advance their business.” —Jason Grebe, Corporate Vice President, General Manager, Cloud Enterprise Solutions Group at Intel.

In addition, today’s general availability also brings new Independent Software Vendor support for Azure Stack HCI with Altaro Software, Commvault, Datadog, Veeam and Veritas—now all fully operable with Azure Stack HCI to give our customers an even broader choice of tools.

Source

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In research dubbed “Achilles,” the Check Point Research team has found over 400 vulnerabilities in one of Qualcomm Technologies’ most-used DSP chips. A chip embedded into over 40% of the mobile phone market, including high-end phones from Google, Samsung, LG, Xiaomi, OnePlus, and more. The vulnerabilities found might allow a malicious actor to enable seemingly-innocent mobile apps, downloaded from official app stores, to run malicious code on the device’s chipset. Consequently, your phone can turn into a spying tool, completely crash, or get infected with hidden and un-removable malware.

Check Point disclosed these findings with Qualcomm, who acknowledged them, notified the relevant device vendors and assigned them with the following CVE’s: CVE-2020-11201, CVE-2020-11202, CVE-2020-11206, CVE-2020-11207, CVE-2020-11208 and CVE-2020-11209.

SandBlast Mobile is the only solution that can defend against this threat. Keep your executives’ phones secure and your corporate data protected.

Check out this video to learn more about these vulnerabilities and how SandBlast Mobile by Check Point defends against them:

What’s the Risk?

The vulnerabilities could have the following impact on users of phones with the affected chip:

Attackers can turn the phone into a perfect spying tool, without any user interaction required– The information that can be exfiltrated from the phone including photos, videos, call-recording, real-time microphone data, GPS and location data, etc.
Attackers may be able to render the mobile phone constantly unresponsive – Making all the information stored on this phone permanently unavailable – including photos, videos, contact details, etc – in other words, a targeted denial-of-service attack.
Malware and other malicious code can completely hide their activities and become un-removable.
These days, while working from home, employees are increasingly using their mobile devices to access corporate assets and perform critical tasks. An employee device that is affected by the Achilles vulnerabilities can pose a risk to the entire organization. Once an attacker compromises the device, he or she can gain access to sensitive business data stored on the work email or any other corporate application.

How can you protect your mobile workforce?
To date, SandBlast Mobile by Check Point is the only Mobile Threat Defense (MTD) solution able to protect mobile devices used to access corporate data in your organization from the “Achilles” vulnerability. SandBlast mobile secures potentially vulnerable devices and makes sure they are not exposed to various device-level exploits and vulnerabilities, including “Achilles”.

The market-leading MTD solution, SandBlast Mobile keeps your corporate data safe by securing employees’ mobile devices across all attack vectors: apps, network and OS.

Designed to reduce admins’ overhead and increase user adoption, it perfectly fits into your existing mobile environment, deploys and scales quickly, and protects devices without impacting user experience nor privacy.

Source : https://blog.checkpoint.com/2020/12/04/40-of-the-worlds-mobile-devices-are-inherently-vulnerable-is-your-corporate-data-at-risk/

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The challenge being that cluster services, like the vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), depend on vCenter Server availability for its configuration and operation. And while there’s ways to increase availability for vCenter Server, think about vSphere High Availability (HA) and vCenter Server High Availability (VCHA), its dependency is not ideal. Also, when thinking about vCenter Server scalability in large on-prem and public clouds, we need a better solution to support clustering services. That’s why vCLS is introduced. In the first release, a subset of DRS capabilities is already using the new vCLS feature.

Basic Architecture
The basic architecture for the vCLS control plane consists of maximum 3 virtual machines (VM), also referred to as system or agent VMs which are placed on separate hosts in a cluster. These are lightweight agent VMs that form a cluster quorum. On smaller clusters with less than 3 hosts, the number of agent VMs is equal to the numbers of ESXi hosts. The agent VMs are managed by vSphere Cluster Services. Users are not expected to maintain the lifecycle or state for the agent VMs, they should not be treated like the typical workload VMs.

Cluster Service Health
The agent VMs that form the cluster quorum state, are self correcting. This means that when the agent VMs are not available, vCLS will try to instantiate or power-on the VMs automatically.

There are 3 health states for the cluster services:

Healthy – The vCLS health is green when at least 1 agent VM is running in the cluster. To maintain agent VM availability, there’s a cluster quorum of 3 agent VMs deployed.
Degraded – This is a transient state when at least 1 of the agent VMs is not available but DRS has not skipped it’s logic due to the unavailability of agent VMs. The cluster could be in this state when either vCLS VMs are being re-deployed or getting powered-on after some impact to the running VMs.
Unhealthy – A vCLS unhealthy state happens when a next run of the DRS logic (workload placement or balancing operation) skips due to the vCLS control-plane not being available (at least 1 agent VM).
Agent VM Resources
The vCLS agent VMs are lightweight, meaning that resource consumption is kept to a minimum. vCLS automatically creates a max of 3 agent VMs per cluster in an existing deployment when vCenter Server is upgraded to vSphere 7 update 1. In a greenfield scenario, they are created when ESXi hosts are added to a new cluster. If no shared storage is available, the agent VMs are placed on local storage. If a cluster is formed before shared storage is configured on the ESXi hosts, as would be the case when using vSAN, it is strongly recommended to move the vCLS agent VMs to shared storage after.

The agent VMs run a customized Photon OS. The resource specification per agent VM is listed in the following table:

Memory 128 MB
Memory reservation 100 MB
Swap Size 256 MB
vCPU 1
vCPU reservation 100 MHz
Disk 2 GB
Ethernet Adapter –
Guest VMDK Size ~245 MB
Storage Space ~480 MB

The 2 GB virtual disk is thin provisioned. Also, there’s no networking involved, so there’s no network adapter configured. The agent VMs are not shown in the Hosts and Clusters overview in the vSphere Client. The VMs and Templates view now contains a new folder, vCLS, that contains all vCLS agent VMs. With multiple clusters, all vCLS agent VMs will show, numbered consecutively.

The vSphere Client contains messages and notes to show information about the vCLS agent VMs, also stating that the power state and resources of these VMs is handled by the vCLS.

Operations
As stated before, the agent VMs are maintained by vCLS. There’s no need for VI admins to power-off the VMs. In fact, the vSphere Client shows a warning when a agent VM is powered-off.

When a host is placed into maintenance mode, the vCLS agent VMs are migrated to other hosts within the cluster like regular VMs. Customers should refrain from removing, or renaming the agent VMs or its folder in order to keep the cluster services healthy.

The lifecycle for vCLS agent VMs is maintained by the vSphere ESX Agent Manager (EAM). The Agent Manager creates the VMs automatically, or re-creates/powers-on the VMs when users try to power-off or delete the VMs. Is the example below, you’ll see a power-off and a delete operation. Both from which the EAM recovers the agent VM automatically.

Automation and vCLS
For customer using scripts to automate tasks, it’s important to build in awareness to ignore the agent VMs in, for example clean-up scripts to delete stale VMs. Identifying the vCLS agent VMs is quickly done in the vSphere Client where the agent VMs are listed in the vCLS folder. Also, examining the VMs tab under Administration > vCenter Server Extensions > vSphere ESX Agent Manager lists the agent VMs from all clusters managed by that vCenter Server instance.

Every agent VM has additional properties so they can be ignored with specific automated tasks. These properties can also be found using the Managed Object Browser (MOB). The specific properties include:

ManagedByInfo
extensionKey == “com.vmware.vim.eam”
type == “cluster-agent”
ExtraConfig keys
“eam.agent.ovfPackageUrl”
“eam.agent.agencyMoId”
“eam.agent.agentMoId”
vCLS Agent VMs have an additional data property key “HDCS.agent” set to “true”. This property is automatically pushed down to the ESXi host along with the other VM ExtraConfig properties explicitly set by EAM.

Source: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2020/09/vsphere-7-update-1-vsphere-clustering-service-vcls.html

More Resources to Learn
vSphere 7 – Improved DRS
vSphere 7 – A Closer Look at the VM DRS Score
Load Balancing Performance of DRS in vSphere 7
What’s New with VMware vSphere 7 Update 1

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To address this changing cybersecurity landscape, some companies have deployed multiple security point products. According to CSO Online, enterprises have an average of 75 products deployed to secure their network and cloud infrastructure. But these disparate point products pose challenges of their own, including management complexity and lack of interoperability — which in turn have led to an explosion in overall operating costs.

Today’s enterprises need a next-generation firewall that can accommodate the continuing increase in network traffic, while at the same time consolidating security controls to stop evasive threats.

Introducing SonicWall NSa 2700: A Gen 7 NGFW for Medium and Distributed Enterprises

The SonicWall Network Security Appliance (NSa) 2700 is a next-generation firewall (NGFW) that delivers industry-leading performance at the lowest total cost of ownership in its class. NSa 2700 protects mid-size networks with comprehensive integrated security services like malware analysis, encrypted traffic inspection, cloud application security and reputation services. It also supports centralized management with a truly intuitive single user interface, significantly improving operational efficiency.

SonicWall NSa 2700 includes advanced networking features such as HA/clustering, SD-WAN, dynamic routing, and virtual routing and forwarding. It combines validated security effectiveness and best-in-class price performance in a single rack unit appliance with high port density. In short, medium enterprises can now get the performance, networking and security capabilities they need from their next-generation firewalls without breaking the bank.

NSa 2700 Next Generation Firewall Highlights

Appliance at a glance

NSa 2700 is an energy-efficient, reliable appliance in a compact 1U chassis. Powered by the next-generation SonicOS 7.0 operating system, it is capable of processing millions of connections while delivering multi-gigabit threat prevention throughput. The following are a few high-level features that make NSa 2700 an attractive option for medium and distributed enterprises:

• 16 x 1 GbE interfaces
• 3 x 10 GbE interfaces
• 3 Gbps of threat prevention performance
• 6 Gbps of application inspection performance
• 5 million stateful and 500,00 DPI connections
• 21,500 connections per second
• Dedicated management port

Powered by the new SonicOS 7.0

The SonicWall NSa 2700 runs on SonicOS 7.0, a new operating system built from the ground up to deliver a modern user interface, intuitive workflows and user-first design principles. SonicOS 7.0 provides multiple features designed to facilitate enterprise-level workflows, easy configuration, and simplified and flexible management — all of which allow enterprises to improve both their security and operational efficiency.

SonicOS 7.0 features:

• Reassembly-Free Deep Packet Inspection® (RFDPI)and Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection™ (RTDMI)
• Secure SD-WAN
• High Availability/Clustering
• TLS 1.3 support
• Intuitive, single-pane-of-glass management
• Gateway Anti-Virus, Intrusion Prevention and Application Control
• Capture ATP Multi-Engine Sandboxing
• URL Filtering

More details about the new SonicOS 7.0 can be found here.

NSa 2700 Deployment Options

SonicWall NSa 2700 has two main deployment options for medium and distributed enterprises:

Internet Edge Deployment

In this standard deployment option, SonicWall NSa 2700 protects private networks from malicious traffic coming from the Internet, allowing you to:

• Deploy a proven NGFW solution with highest performance and port density (including 10 GbE connectivity) in its class
• Gain visibility and inspect encrypted traffic, including TLS 1.3, to block evasive threats coming from the Internet — all without compromising performance
• Protect your enterprise with integrated security, including malware analysis, cloud app security, URL filtering and reputation services

Medium and Distributed Enterprise Deployment

The SonicWall NSa 2700 supports SD-WAN and can be centrally managed, making it an ideal fit for medium and distributed enterprises. By leveraging NSa’s high port density, which includes 10 GbE connectivity, enterprises can support distributed branches and wide area networks. This deployment allows organizations to:

• Provide direct secure Internet access to distributed branch offices instead of back-hauling through corporate headquarters
• Allow distributed branch offices to securely access internal resources in corporate headquarters or in a public cloud, significantly improving application latency
• Reduce complexity and improve operations by using a central management system, which is accessed through an intuitive, single-pane-of-glass user interface

Overall Solution Value

The new NSa 2700 offers enterprises a best-in-class next-generation firewall with high speed and port density, all at a lower total cost of ownership. With integrated security services like malware analysis, URLF and cloud application security, NSa 2700 offers enterprises superb protection from advanced threats.

To learn more about the new NSa 2700, watch the video or click here.

Source: https://blog.sonicwall.com/en-us/2020/11/new-sonicwall-nsa-2700-high-performance-and-consolidated-security-at-lower-tco/

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Account takeover is a form of identity theft and fraud, where a malicious third party successfully gains access to a user’s account credentials. Cybercriminals use brand impersonation, social engineering, and phishing to steal login credentials and access

email accounts.

Once the account is compromised, hackers monitor and track activity to learn how the company does business, the email signatures they use, and the way financial transactions are handled. This helps them launch successful attacks, including harvesting additional login credentials for other accounts.

Combatting account takeover requires a variety of strategies:

Identifying the signs of phishing emails that could lead to account compromise.
Recognizing signs of brand impersonation and URL spoofing.
Fortifying yourself against social engineering tactics by knowing how social engineers operate.
The sample shown is typical of emails that lead to account takeover.

2. Lateral Phishing

With lateral phishing, attackers send phishing emails from hijacked accounts to contacts within and outside of the company to spread the attack more broadly. Because these attacks come from a legitimate email account and appear to be from a trusted colleague or partner, they tend to have a high success rate.

Despite these facts, targets can prevent lateral phishing from succeeding by:

Being skeptical of emails from partners that are written in a different tone or style.
Being wary of any requests for financial or confidential information.
Verifying the sender’s identity with a phone call.
Having a manager or colleague weigh in if you’re unsure.
Alerting your IT team if you suspect anything suspicious as it could be part of a larger attack.

The sample shown highlights an example of lateral phishing.

3. Brand Impersonation

Brand impersonation is designed to mimic a familiar company or business to trick victims into responding and disclosing personal or otherwise sensitive information. Common types of brand impersonation include, service impersonation, a phishing attack designed to harvest login credentials for personal or business accounts, and brand hijacking, whereby fake or spoofed domain names provide the illusion of legitimacy.

Brand impersonation can be difficult to detect when executed well but spoofing a brand convincingly can prove equally challenging for cybercriminals. By paying close attention to things like:

logo use and placement
adherence to brand colours and overall design
copy, tone and overall content
domain names and web addresses
You can spot irregularities and potential spoofing attempts. The sample shown indicates signs of brand impersonation.

4. Malware

Cybercriminals use email to deliver documents containing malicious software, also known as malware. Typically, either the malware is hidden directly in the document itself, or an embedded script downloads it from an external website.

Common types of malware include viruses, Trojans, spyware, worms, and ransomware, a favourite of cybercriminals who use it to infect networks and lock email, data, and other critical files until a ransom is paid.

To get victims to click, attackers will disguise malware links or files with enticing names, like ‘payroll file’ or ‘merger plans.’

You can avoid malware by:

Refraining from clicking links or downloading attachments in suspicious emails.
Recognizing signs of phishing emails that deliver malware and avoiding or reporting them.
Being a healthy sceptic when evaluating emails you receive.
The sample email highlights some of the clues you can watch for.

5. Business Email Compromise

In Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, scammers impersonate an employee in the organization in order to defraud the company, its employees, customers, or partners.

In most cases, attackers focus their efforts on employees with access to the company’s finances or personal information, tricking individuals into performing wire transfers or disclosing sensitive information.

These attacks use social-engineering tactics and compromised accounts and are usually devoid of attachments and links found in typical phishing emails.

BEC emails may leverage authority to elicit a response. As such, they often appear to come from the CEO or other high-level executive.

How to avoid becoming a victim of Business Email Compromise:

Be sceptical if you normally don’t get emails from higher-ups.
Keep calm if the email claims to be urgent.
Verify the legitimacy of the email by calling the sender.
Report the email to management or IT if you think it’s a fraud.

6. Scamming

With email scamming, cybercriminals use fraudulent schemes to defraud victims or steal their identity by tricking them into disclosing personal information. Examples include fake job postings, investment opportunities, inheritance notifications, lottery prizes, and fund transfers.

Scammers prey on an individual’s sympathy, charity, or fear. Unfortunately, many individuals fall for email scams, unwittingly sharing sensitive information or making payments to scammers.

Scam phishing emails can be recognized by their clues:

A sender address you don’t recognize or doesn’t make sense.
An empty ‘To’ address field or one that’s filled with names you don’t recognize.
A send date or time that falls outside normal business hours.
A heightened sense of urgency or alarm.
Promises of rewards or threats if you do or don’t act.
The sample email highlights some of the clues you can watch for.

7. Conversation Hijacking

With conversation hijacking, cybercriminals insert themselves into existing business conversations or initiate new ones based on information they’ve gathered from compromised email accounts.

Their main goal is to use this information to steal money or personal data.

By blending in, conversation hijackers leverage familiarity to catch victims off guard. A typical email exchange may be an informal request to verify bank information while the sender is out of town, or an urgent demand to download a report.

How to avoid becoming a victim of Conversation Hijacking:

Verify the identity of the email sender with a phone call.
Be sceptical of requests that involve the transfer of money or financial information.
Have a manager weigh in if you’re unsure of the sender, request or overall email.
Alert your IT team if you suspect anything suspicious as it could be part of a larger attack.

8. SPAM

Spam is any email that arrives in your inbox uninvited. While most spam contains harmless promotional content, some spam emails contain malicious links or attachments developed by cybercriminals.

Clicking or downloading these can lead to identity theft, a ransomware attack or any number of other potentially devastating cyber threats.

Malicious spam can be spotted, however, by recognizing the clues found in most phishing emails.

These include:

A sender address you don’t recognize or doesn’t make sense.
An empty ‘To’ address field or one filled with names you don’t know.
A send date or time that falls outside normal business hours.
A heightened sense of urgency or alarm.
Promises of rewards or threats if you do or don’t act.
The sample email highlights clues you can watch for.

9. Data Exfiltration

Data exfiltration is the unauthorized transfer of data from a computer or other device. It can be conducted manually via physical access to a computer or through malicious programming on the internet or a network.

Attacks are typically targeted, with the objective of gaining access to a network or machine to locate and copy specific data. In addition to malicious attacks, human error can also play a role in data loss.

Cyberattacks often begin with phishing emails.

Signs include:

A sender address you don’t recognize or doesn’t make sense.
An empty ‘To’ address field or one with names you don’t know.
A send date or time that falls outside normal business hours.
A heightened sense of urgency or alarm.
Promises of rewards or threats if you do or don’t act.
If you suspect anything suspicious, alert your IT team immediately as it could be part of a larger attack. By recognizing the clues in the sample email provided you can avoid these attacks.

10. Spear Phishing

Spear phishing is a highly personalized form of email phishing attack. Cybercriminals research their targets and craft highly personalized messages, often impersonating a trusted colleague, website, or business.

Spear-phishing emails try to steal sensitive information, such as login or financial credentials to commit fraud, identity theft, and other crimes. Social-engineering tactics are commonly used in spear-phishing attacks to increase the likelihood of success. These include a sense of urgency, brevity, and pressure.

Spear attempts can be spotted by recognizing their clues:

Messaging that includes an uncomfortable level of personalization coming from a source you don’t recognize.
References to topics or events that are oddly coincidental.
A send date or time that falls outside normal business hours.
A heightened sense of urgency or alarm.
Promises of rewards or threats if you do or don’t act.
If you feel you’re been targeted, consider changing social networking settings to keep personal information private.

11. Domain Impersonation

Attackers often impersonate domains to fool victims and carry out attacks like conversation hijacking.

They do so by using techniques such as typo-squatting, replacing letters in a legitimate email domain with different ones or adding hard-to-notice characters to the legitimate email address.

An attacker may even change the top-level domain (TLD) to .net or .co instead of .com, to fool unsuspecting victims.

In preparation for the attack, cybercriminals register the impersonating domain. It can be easy to miss the subtle differences between the legitimate email domain and the impersonator.

How to avoid becoming a victim of Domain Impersonation

Pay close attention to domain names and web addresses.
Be wary of hyperlinks and shortened urls, tools scammers often use to hide fake domains.

12. URL Phishing

Cybercriminals use fake websites to trick victims into keying in sensitive information through a tactic known as URL phishing.

The sites they develop and the web addresses they use may look legitimate, but engaging can lead to identity theft, data theft, compromised networks or a number of other potentially devasting cyberattacks.

URL phishing can be avoided by:

Being a healthy sceptic when evaluating emails you receive.
Hovering over links in emails to reveal the true web address.
Keying in the site name being referenced instead of clicking on any links.
Looking closely at web pages for signs it may be fake, such as poor grammar, poor design or branding that seems off or out of date.
The sample email shown highlights some of the clues you can watch for.

13. Extortion

Extortion scams are increasing in frequency and becoming more sophisticated. In these types of attacks, cybercriminals leverage usernames and passwords stolen in data breaches, using the information to contact and try to trick victims into giving them money. The scammers may claim to have a compromising video or images from the victim’s computer and threaten to share it with their contacts unless they pay up.

Extortion leverages a variety of emotions to elicit a response, including fear, shame and guilt. If you’re targeted, you can prevent these types of cyberattacks from working by:

• Thinking rationally about the situation and keeping your emotions in check.
• Understanding that these types of attacks appear serious but are usually bluffs.
• Remembering that you are in control and that you have no obligation to respond.
• Reporting these emails to IT or the proper sources.

The sample shown highlights how extortionists craft their attacks

Source: https://www.barracuda.com

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