Imagine falling victim to Remote Access Fraud… You wake up one morning to find you’ve lost some money. Not the loose change your children sometimes “lovingly” borrow out of your wallet from time to time, but the kind that really worries you and shows up on your bank balance as obviously down from when you checked it the night before. Your mind does a quick check… “no it’s not month-end; no it isn’t dreaded debit order time; and no I didn’t purchase anything online recently…mm

We have been overrun these past few months with everything Coronavirus, COVID-19-related, and with it, a near-constant stream of information and disinformation sent to us/available from/on every platform known and used by man. The world has gone a little crazy. The problem here – besides the fear, panic and already crippling, economic ripple-effects from the virus itself – are the opportunistic cyber criminals who revel in exploiting this fear and chaos in order to steal mone

Are we being spied on via our cameras and microphones on our personal devices? Built-in device cameras and microphones are great. They allow us to easily communicate face-to-face with friends and family even if they are on the other side of the globe. They allow journalists to interview people in far flung corners of the world, and they allow entrepreneurs in remote locations to do business with people in big cities across the world. The problem is that these tiny cameras and

When it comes to games – especially online gaming, it’s one thing to play, but it’s altogether something else to be played! Three interesting facts about the global online gaming industry… The worth of the PC online game market worldwide is expected to reach $45.5 billion by 2021. (Statista, Nov 2019) It is estimated there will be 2.7 billion gamers by 2021. Almost a third of the human race! (Statista, Aug 2019) The number 1 game for awarded prize money in 2018/19 was ‘Dota 2

In its simplistic form, ransomware is a type of malicious software designed to block access to a computer system or computer files until a sum of money is paid. Most ransomware variants encrypt the files on the affected computer – usually by way of a malicious link or ad clicked, rendering the system and/or files inaccessible, and then demanding a ransom payment to restore access. Ransomware is one of – if not, the leading cybersecurity threat of 2019. Ransomware costs busine

Are you and your organisation ready for Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2019? This is your opportunity to share key cybersecurity knowledge with your networks and help build a more secure community! What are we doing during Cybersecurity Awareness Month? GoldPhish is proud to provide free CyberMonth2019 educational resources you can distribute through the month of October. The toolkit will help you inform, educate, and empower your networks on simple Cybersecurity controls and

We all want to feel safe. We all want to feel secure. We all want to know that the things we value are safe and secure. Safety and Security. On December 10th 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, stating – “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of persons”. We all want to feel safe. We all want to feel secure. We all want to know that the things we value are safe and secure. The f

It’s safe to say Facebook isn’t safe. Just last month (Thursday 21 March 2019) Facebook announced yet another data breach – the third in a year (we know of), this time involving up to 600 million passwords stored in plain text and exposed internally to up to 20,000 employees of the social network giant. The news caps a long period of trouble for Facebook over the way it handles and protects user data. In September last year, it said information on 50 million users had been ex

To jack somebody (for something) is to steal something from somebody, especially something small or of low value. Being jacked isn’t going to ruin your life necessarily – it’s not like having your bank account details stolen or having your private credentials hacked, but it certainly is a nuisance, and if it happens every day it could definitely have a negative affect on your life. In our blog (Security Benefits of Blockchain) we looked at how blockchain works and what securi

In building, a wall made of 500 connected, overlapping small concrete blocks with steel is stronger than a wall made of one, large concrete “block” without steel. If you wanted to keep a single letter, one “block” of information or an individual document of private data safe and secure ten or 2000 years ago chances are you would have kept it under lock and key in one “secret” place, and/or possibly encrypted it with a cypher – like the famous Roman General Julius Caesar did w

A watering hole is a waterhole from which animals regularly drink, right? True. Or a pub, bar or restaurant – any place where people gather socially, right? Also true. Well in the world of cyber security there is a third, which derives its name from the first two – a ‘Watering hole attack.’ The concept behind the watering hole attack is that in order to insert malware (malicious software) into a company, you must stalk an individual or group and place malware on a site that t

We all know the feeling; a sore throat, sneezing, congestion, a cough, a runny nose…oh no, the dreaded cold virus! No human is immune. Likewise, no computer is immune. How it happens, how it works and how we treat it remain mostly the same for human and computer. Computer viruses, much like the flu virus, are designed to spread from host to host and has the ability to replicate itself. Similarly, in the same way that viruses cannot reproduce without a host cell, computer viru

In June of this year (2018) an 85-year-old South African pensioner had R300 000 – roughly USD $20 000, stolen from his bank account in a SIM swap scam. A SIM swap scam? SIM Swap fraud (also known as SIM splitting) is a type of account takeover fraud that generally targets a weakness in two-factor authentication or two-step verification, where the second factor or step is an SMS or a call placed to a mobile telephone. How it works… The fraud centres around exploiting a mobile

Nothing short of grinding your physically-stored data into granola dust for scrap-yard-hungry robots will do. Only physical drive destruction will offer definitive disposal of sensitive data for those unwanted, damaged or dated devices. Data destruction is the process of destroying data stored on tapes, hard disks and other forms of electronic media so that it is completely unreadable and cannot be accessed or used for unauthorised purposes. Everything from USB flash drives,

We all know the intrusive feeling of those irritating and unwanted emails, texts and phone calls that plague us – seemingly daily, from companies that have somehow acquired our personal and private information. Here’s what you need to know about Data Protection and the new regulations that have come into play… As consumers, we don’t realise how much information is revealed about us while using the Internet, or fully appreciate how in previous years data and information about

Have you ever wondered how the colossal entity that is the Internet – including apps, websites, companies and even private individuals – almost always knows where you are in the world or what you’re up to? Constantly suggesting things of interest in relation to or with your location, advertising banners for things and places relevant to where you are and what you’re doing? Well, THAT’S Geolocation. Geolocation is a technology that uses data acquired from your computer or mobi

Can you imagine a world without social media? No Snapchat, no Instagram, no Twitter, no Facebook! A world where children and adults woke up in the morning and got excited about playing outdoors and seeing each other in the flesh, rather than being sucked into their phones; checking their feeds, likes and comments – zombies to the real world around them. A world where security and privacy were tangible, physical problems we could easily identify and protect ourselves against.

We all know of or remember a bully; especially from our childhood. That person, who by force, threat, or coercion abused, intimidated or aggressively dominated us or others we knew. We would, and often could avoid these “physical” in-person attacks. Unfortunately, while better connecting the world and democratising information, the Internet also now allows bullies to hide behind masks of anonymity. The darker side, the “faceless evil” of the Internet is a growing threat to te

Have you ever wondered about all this talk of “things” being “smart”? “Smart” phones and “smart” cars, “smart” homes and “smart” bars… with all this talk about things getting “smarter”, one has to wonder, are we as humans allowing ourselves to become, well, less smart? We’re certainly becoming more reliant on technology that’s for sure, and allowing more and more “things” to think and act for us. Enter … the Internet of Things. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of p

No business risk in the 21st century has created more challenges and concern to boardrooms and C-suites than cybersecurity risk. Reputations have been destroyed with customers and shareholders, and recent lawsuits have raised questions challenging the integrity of senior executives when faced with managing the impact of a cyber-attack. The media have been unforgiving and it is very clear that no nation, industry sector, company or individual is immune.  For this reason, it is