4 of our top tips for staying safe during the Coronavirus Outbreak

Here at Advantage, we are committed to helping small and medium sized businesses to fight cybercrime and with hackers now taking advantage of the panic and hysteria surrounding the spread of the coronavirus, we thought that we would take this opportunity to help you keep your wits about you and most of all to stay safe. 

As you are already probably aware there have been a number of different scams going round, from credential theft from coronavirus themed emails right through to conspiracy theory campaigns which are trying to guarantee cures to trick individuals & businesses. Cybercriminals are using every trick in the book to target both individuals and businesses to send you to malicious websites & much, much more. 

This is why in our latest blog article, we will provide you with 4 of our top tips for staying safe during this outbreak: 

Keep your eyes peeled for email scams 

Only just the other day, hackers tried to portray themselves as the World Health Organisation  to try and extract personal contact details from their targets, so you need to make sure that you take the side of caution with each and every email you receive. Even if that email you receive looks to be genuine, take the side of caution when it comes to clicking on links or opening attachments as they may well expose your personal details. The easiest way to spot malware is to quickly check the end of the link’s address, you will find that if the extension doesn’t end in either docx, .pdf or .mp4 it is probably not real! It is important to note that any document and video files that you receive never usually get sent over in either .exe or .lnk formats. 

Safeguard your systems 

At this stage, it is worth reviewing your business’s cyber security measures. Are they up to date, up to scratch and watertight? If the answer to these questions is not 100% yes, then you need to set some time aside to evaluate and implement the most appropriate security measures. Here at Advantage, we can help you to audit your IT as well as help your business to put a disaster recovery plan in place & help your business to become CyberSecurity Certified.  

Inform your employees 

More often than not, hackers choose to target individuals, so it is important to tell them exactly what this looks like, how to check its validity & when to avoid it completely and report it to your IT Support provider. It can often be the case that you have communicated this to your employees before, however things can be forgotten, and there is no harm in offering a refresher to your team in the form of an email or meeting. 

Don’t believe everything you read or see in the media 

The growing trend of fake news is the one to keep an eye on during this outbreak. Posts can easily go viral in a matter of minutes and create panic amongst the population for no reason whatsoever. The best thing to do is to review the source and ask yourself the following question, it is really authentic? Better still, only read sources that you can trust such as www.gov.uk & www.nhs.uk for the latest updates and advice.  

Next Steps? 

If you would like to discuss how we can help your business stay safe through our tailored security solutions, then please get in touch with our team of IT experts today. 

If you want to receive all the latest Cyber Security updates straight to your inbox then please sign up to our mailing list today.