Jean L. Serio Reveals What Can Be Done When Locked Out of Site or Email

  PORTLAND, OR - 09/22/2017 (PRESS RELEASE JET)

Announcing:  Cyber Fraud Protect Online Magazine and Fraud Alerts for Small Businesses. Helping you protect the business you’ve worked hard to build. Starting today.

It's a fact: In todays hacker-filled world, it's only a matter of time before your site, email or accounts are hacked.

“Cyber attackers revealed new levels of ambition in 2016, a year marked by extraordinary attacks,” said the security experts at Symantec. Their April 2017 Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR) stats show in 2016 their threat collection networks picked up 229K website breaches per day; 1.6million per week. They’ve uncovered 98 million bots; 1.1 billion identities were exposed in 2016. And record Distributed Denials of Service (DDoS) attacks by botnets of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices were recorded. “While cyber-attacks managed to cause unprecedented levels of disruption, attackers frequently used very simple tools and tactics to make a big impact while attempting to hide in plain sight.” Relying on, says Symantec, straightforward approaches, such as spear-phishing emails and “living off the land” by using whatever tools are on hand, such as legitimate network admin software (usually found on blogs) and operating system features (found on PC’s).  

Along the way, cyber-fraudsters have perfected the technique of site and email lockout.

If you are a business person, like me, you likely have a blog you use as a marketing tool. That said, imagine my shock when I was recently locked out of my own business blog, my content deleted and replaced with a hacker’s content; my data stolen. When I overcame my shock, I was angry but realized I had little recourse. 

Dealing with hackers isn’t a skill of mine; nor do I believe it’s one most with a website or blog possess. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered anyone and everyone can be hacked at any time, without the necessary skills to handle the situation and no one to rely upon for help.

Lest you think your site, blog, email or accounts will be overlooked by hackers who devote their skills only to specific groups, here’s some compelling info from the Insurance Information Institute. Cyber-criminal activity affects everyone from individuals, financial institutions, small and entrepreneurial businesses to corporations, the healthcare industry to education (schools and colleges), even U.S. military and U.S. government sites. And that's just to start.

Here are 5 mistakes I made which helped hackers break into my blog, steal my data and lock me out.  Along with strategies, you can utilize, to avoid the same mistakes:

1.Create a password which includes a combo of letters (upper/lower case), numbers and punctuation marks. Or purchase a password creator which spits out unique, hard-to hack passwords. Hackers crack passwords first. My log-in was, quite simply, a no-brainer; my password easy to crack.   

2. Work on your blog or site on a regular basis; for instance, once or twice a week on varying days. This was a new site which I and my employees were slow to develop. Making it a hacker’s playground.

3. Protect your domain name. Choose a trusted registrar, keep your info up to date (name, address, etc), keep your domain info private, ask your registrar to place your domain on ‘registrar locked’.  While I own a variety of domain names, this particular one was not covered by “Who Is”.
 

4. Head immediately to your domain host if your site or blog’s been hacked. Review the situation and explain you want the site closed down. Savvy domain hosts will check out the site, confirm what’s happened and immediately close it down.

5. Keep your domain separate from your hosting account. If a hacker gets hold of your hosting account info, they can take over everything.  This is something I’ve always done but mention it as an absolute ‘must-do’.

The reality of the world today is anyone using the Internet runs the risk of losing their identity or having their account(s) compromised at any moment. And, more to the point, you can no longer simply rely on your bank, financial institution or anti-virus software to save you from hackers. They're insistent, creative and online 24/7 just waiting for the opportunity to commit cyber-fraud.

Bottom line: You can start taking control now. There are a variety of simple steps and actions every business should start taking today, cyber-security experts tell us. Strategies which can help keep your identity, business, and accounts safe and secure.  Beat the hackers at their own game.

More info:  https://goo.gl/CUQHhV