Software

New Phishing Tracker For Office 365

Posted on by Andy Miller

Microsoft is launching a new “campaign views” tool in Office 365 that is designed to offer greater protection from phishing attacks by enabling businesses to be able to spot the pattern of a phishing campaign over individual messages.

Context and Visibility

Microsoft is in a good position to leverage the large amount of anti-phishing, anti-spam, and anti-malware data and experience that it has across the entire Office 365 service world-wide to identify campaigns. It is this information that feeds into the campaign views tool.
The idea is that the extra context and visibility that campaign views provides gives the full story of how an organisation has been targeted. This additional dimension of defence means that an organisation and its users can see if/how defences have held up against popular attacks, and adjust its own defences accordingly, based on these insights.

What It Shows

The kind of information that the ‘campaign views’ tool can reveal to security teams includes:

  • A summary of a phishing campaign i.e. when it started, it’s pattern and timeline, the size and spread of the campaign, and how many known victims there has been (and see if users have clicked on the phishing link).
  • A list of IP addresses and senders associated with the attack, plus a list of all the URLs that were used in the attack.
  • A look at which messages were blocked, delivered to junk or quarantine, or allowed to get through to the inbox.

Today’s Attacks ‘Morph’ To Get Around Defences

Today’s email attacks are often the sophisticated output of factory-like cybercrime operations where new templates and variances can be rapidly created, generated, and scaled-up in a way that is designed to offer the best chance of maximising financial gain while evading detection and capture.

For example, in a single campaign, the attackers can make multiple changes and variants (morphs) e.g. changes in the sending infrastructure, the sending IPs and sending domains, sender names and addresses, URLs, and the hosting infrastructure for their attack sites. These morphs can, therefore, enable attackers to get around popular defence tactics such as blocking known bad URLs, sending IP address, or sending domains.

Value

Microsoft says that the extra context and visibility that ‘campaign views’ gives security teams means that they can be more effective and efficient. For example, once armed with the information that ‘campaign views’ provides, security teams can be better at remediating compromised/vulnerable users, improving the general security posture (by removing configuration flaws), investigating related/similar campaigns, and hunting and tracking any threats that have the same indicators of compromise.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Email is one of the main ways that cybercriminals can gain access to company systems and phishing campaigns are an all-too-common way to dupe businesses into clicking on links in often convincing-looking pages, thereby releasing the malware that causes so much damage, or imparting password and financial information. ‘Campaign views’ appears to be another potentially valuable tool in the cyber defences of businesses with its main strong point being that it gives a much fuller picture of real-world attacks. This additional context and data can help businesses to become much better prepared and more proactive in finding and closing the door on rapidly evolving email security threats.

Real-time Phishing Protection Now Available in Chrome

Posted on by Andy Miller

Google has announced real-time phishing protection with the help of improvements to ‘Safe Browsing’ which allow Chrome to check each new site you visit against a safe list stored on your computer and with Google so that Chrome can issue an instant warning if the site is thought to be suspicious or malicious.

Phishing Problem

As well as being sent to phishing pages via links in phishing emails, phishing links are also inserted into malicious advertisements and even direct messages on chat apps.

Also, even though Google’s existing ‘Safe Browsing’ feature adds thousands of new unsafe sites and to the blocklists of the web industry and Chrome already checks the URL of each site you visit/file you download against a local list which is updated every 30 minutes, Google has noted that some phishing sites are even able to slip through the 30-minute refresh window by switching domains quickly or by hiding from Google’s crawlers.

The multiple phishing threats coupled with the ability of some sites to side-step even a 30-minute time window are what have prompted Google to move into real-time phishing checks through Chrome.

Real-Time

Google’s new, improved protections via Chrome allow the inspection of the URLs of pages visited with Safe Browsing’s servers in real-time (local safe site list check + checks with Google) in order to be able to give users an instant warning that they may be on a malicious page as well as a prompt to change their password.

Google says that this real-time warning system on sites that are brand new can deliver a 30% increase in protections.

Password Issues

The issues of using weak passwords, password sharing, and the stealing of passwords through phishing are all-too-familiar threats. With this in mind, Google launched predictive phishing protections which can warn users who are syncing history in Chrome when they enter their Google Account password into suspected phishing sites. Google has now also expanded this protection to cover everyone signed in to Chrome (whether or not Sync is enabled) and the feature will also work for all the passwords stored in Chrome’s password manager.

This updated security feature now means that if you type one of your protected passwords (from Chrome’s password manager, or the Google Account password you used to sign in to Chrome) into an unusual site, Chrome will classify this as a potentially dangerous event.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Offering real-time phishing protection checks is one way to help Chrome users stay a step ahead of cybercriminals who have shown that they could even adapt their campaigns quickly enough to get past a sophisticated system that updates its security information every 30 minutes. This has to be good news for business and domestic users alike, and the flashing up of instant warnings on visiting new sites looks as though it could reduce the numbers of those who fall victim to phishing attacks as well as constantly reminding Chrome users of the risks that are ever-present on the Internet today and of how easy it would be to fall victim to ever-more convincing and sophisticated phishing attempts.

New Google ‘Interpreter’: Real-Time Translator For Your Mobile

Posted on by Andy Miller

Google has announced the rollout of its “interpreter mode” real-time translator on Assistant-enabled Android and iOS phones worldwide.

A Back and Forth Conversation

Google says that interpreter mode means that you can now use your mobile phone to have a “back and forth conversation with someone speaking a foreign language”. In fact, interpreter mode comes loaded with 44 languages, and since it’s integrated with the Assistant it’s already on your Android phone. Those with iOS can also use interpreter by downloading the latest Google Assistant app.

How To Use It

To operate interpreter mode Google says that all you have to do is say e.g. “Hey Google, be my German translator” or “Hey Google, help me speak Spanish”, after which you’ll be able to see and hear the translated conversation on your phone. Interpreter has some built-in ways to make your foreign language conversations faster and smoother, such as, after each translation, the Assistant presenting Smart Replies, and giving you suggestions that let you quickly respond without speaking.

Interpreter mode offers different ways to communicate which you can use according to your situation e.g. type using a keyboard for quiet environments, or manually select what language to speak.

Other Translation Tools Are Available

Google’s offering is not the only translation tool available for use on mobile devices. There are a number of different apps and services including iTranslate Voice, SayHi, TextGrabber (for reading foreign text), Microsoft Translator, WayGo, and more.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

A recent EU survey showed that, sadly, only 38% of British people can speak more than one language and this statistic highlights a real need for this kind of service among UK people travelling abroad.

The Interpreter mode could clearly be very useful for business (and personal) trips overseas in removing language barriers. As well as allowing you to hold basic conversations without any personal knowledge of a language, it may prove very useful for things such as researching and checking travel/flight information, finding local restaurants and landmarks, getting recommendations, and holding business conversations which can sometimes involve the use of more complex and specialised words and terms in foreign languages.

Tech Tip – Read Without Distractions

Posted on by Andy Miller

If you need to read a web page without the distractions of adverts or unwanted recommendations, Microsoft Edge in Windows 10 provides an easy way to do this.

– In Microsoft Edge (top), click on the “Reading View” icon (open book symbol).

– Alternatively, type Ctrl+Shift+R.

How Does Encryption Work?

Posted on by Andy Miller

Encryption comes from the age-old science of cryptography.  In the digital world of today, encryption refers to using electronic devices to generate unique encryption algorithms which essentially scramble messages and data making them unintelligible to anyone who tries to intercept them, and also to provide an effective way to lock our electronic devices.

Using Encryption

Encryption can be used for most things that have an internet connection, such as messaging apps, personal banking apps, websites, online payment methods, files and more.

Why?

Cybercriminals seek our personal data (especially financial details) which they can find in our files, on our personals devices, and on websites / platforms and places online where we have submitted that data e.g. for registration/login, payment, in the form of emails and other messages, and our personal data may be stored in many different places (servers and databases) across the Internet and the digital world.

Verizon figures show that nearly one-third of all data breaches in 2018 involved phishing and that phishing was present in 78% of cyber-espionage incidents and the installation and use of backdoors.  Also, IT Governance figures, for example, show that 421,103,896 data records were confirmed to have been breached in October this year (still only 50% of the monthly average!) in111 incidents (including the compromising of sensitive and financial information).

A recent nCiper survey showed that the main driver for encryption is the protection of sensitive information and that organisations use encryption to protect intellectual property and the personal information of their customers.

Symmetric and Asymmetric Encryption

There are two main encryption methods, symmetric and asymmetric, both of which are made up of encryption algorithms, and the use of prime numbers forms a fundamental aspect of popular encryption methods.

Note: You will often hear the term ‘keys’ used as part of the explanation of encryption.  Keys in this sense means a random (but unique) string of bits that are generated by an algorithm to scramble and unscramble data.  Generally, the longer the key, the harder it is to break the encryption code.

Symmetric encryption uses the same (identical) key for encrypting and decrypting data. With symmetric encryption, two or more parties have access to the same key. This means that although it is still secure, anyone who knows how to put the code in place can also reverse engineer it.  Symmetric key encryption is generally used for encrypting large amounts of data efficiently e.g. 256-bit AES keys are symmetric keys.

Asymmetric encryption, on the other hand, uses a pair of keys, one for encrypting the data and the other for decrypting it. For the first key (used to encrypt data), ‘public key’ cryptography uses an algorithm to generate very complex keys, which is why asymmetric encryption is considered to be more secure than symmetric encryption (the code can’t be run backwards).  With asymmetric encryption, the public key is shared with the servers to enable the message to be sent, but the private key (owned by the possessor of the public key) is kept secret. The message can only be decrypted, therefore, by a person with the private key that matches the public one. Different public-key systems can use different algorithms.

Public Key Encryption – HTTPS

Public key encryption is widely used and is useful for establishing secure communications over the Internet e.g. for TLS/SSL, which enables HTTPS.  For example, A website’s SSL/TLS certificate is shared publicly and contains the public key, but the private key is on the origin server i.e. it is “owned” by the website.

Different Methods of Encryption

There numerous common encryption algorithms and methods.  These include:

  • RSA – Unveiled by three mathematicians back in 1977, RSA is a public-key encryption algorithm and a common standard for encrypting data sent over the internet.
  • Triple DES – designed to replace the original Data Encryption Standard (DES) algorithm and uses three individual keys with 56 bits each.  Triple DES is being used less frequently now but is still used in financial services and other industries.
  • Blowfish – also designed to replace the original Data Encryption Standard (DES).  This is a flexible and strong standard that is found in many different software categories e.g. e-commerce platforms (to protect passwords).
  • Twofish – One of the fastest, can be used in hardware and software environments, and (like Blowfish) is freely and often bundled in encryption programs.
  • AES – Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is an incredibly strong encryption algorithm used by the U.S. Government, and likely to become the private sector standard in future.

Free Encryption

In addition to Blowfish and Twofish, other free encryption tools include LastPass (a popular password manager), VeraCrypt (available for Windows, OS X and Linux OS), and FileVault2 (good for encrypting data on macOS devices and Mac hardware).

Windows 10 includes its own encryption tool ‘BitLocker’ which enables you to use encryption on your PC’s hard drive and on removable drives.

End-to-End Encryption

End-to-end encryption is used to encode and scramble information so only the sender and receiver can see it. For example, WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption and although the messages go through a server, none of those messages can be read by anyone other than the sender and receiver.

WhatsApp and its end-to-end encryption were criticised by Amber Rudd in 2017 (who was Home Secretary at the time) when it was revealed that the first London Bridge terror attackers used WhatsApp to plan the attack and to communicate.  This led to government calls for ‘back doors’ to be built-in to WhatsApp and other end-to-end encrypted communications tools to allow government monitoring.  These calls were resisted on the grounds that building back doors means that security is compromised, and cybercriminals could also exploit these back doors.

Fails

Although encryption provides effective security and privacy it is not always infallible. For example:

  • Back in May 2018, A German newspaper released details of a security vulnerability discovered by researchers at Munster University of Applied Sciences, in PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) data encryption. PGP is an encryption program that is used for signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories, and disk partitions, and to increase the security of e-mail communications.
  • Also, in October this year a report by a former Google employee on the ‘Freedom of the Press Foundation’ website warned organisations that any data stored on Google’s G Suite is not encrypted, can be accessed by administrators and can be shared with law enforcement on request.

Quantum Threat

One on threats to existing encryption that many tech commentators fear in the near future comes from quantum computers.  For example, quantum computers can perform calculations much faster than classical computer and this could enable them to defeat the encryption that currently protects our data e.g. our online banking records and other personal documents on hard drives.  With people having access to (commercial) quantum computers, this could become a real threat (e.g. access to Quantum Systems are now being offered via the cloud).

As well as the quantum threat, there is also some concern among tech and security commentators about the encryption and anonymisation technology that is being used to hide criminal activity e.g. on the dark web

The Future

In the immediate future, therefore, some companies are seeking to address the threat from quantum computers cracking existing encryption algorithms. Estimates of when there will be commercially available quantum computers range between 10 and 20 years, although state-sponsored use of quantum computers for wrongdoing could conceivably happen sooner.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is already pushing researchers to look ahead to this “postquantum” era.

Recently, IBM researchers developed two quantum-proof cryptographic algorithms (Kyber and Dilithium) which now make up the “Cryptographic Suite for Algebraic Lattices” (CRYSTALS).  These have enabled IBM to create the world’s first quantum computing-safe tape drive.

In the meantime, however, with cyber threats evolving at a fast pace, companies and organisations that don’t use encryption as one of their security tools are effectively making things too easy for cybercriminals to access their data, with potentially devastating consequences.

Facebook’s New Tool Allows You To Port Your Photos & Videos To Google

Posted on by Andy Miller

Facebook has announced that it is releasing a data portability tool that will enable Facebook users to transfer their Facebook photos and videos directly to other services, starting with Google Photos.

Why?

Facebook acknowledged in its white paper (published back in September) that under GDPR currently, and under the California Consumer Privacy Act rules next year, data portability is a legal requirement. Also, Facebook said that it had also been considering ways to improve people’s ability to transfer their Facebook data to other platforms and services for some time e.g. since 2010 Facebook has offered Download Your Information (“DYI”) to customers so they can share their information with other online services.

In addition to the legal requirements and Facebook’s existing DYI service, Facebook highlights its own belief in the principle of data portability, and how this could give people control and choice while encouraging innovation as the reason for the introduction of its new data portability tool.

What Is It?

Facebook says that its new photo transfer tool (the roll-out has just started) is a tool based on code that has been developed through participation in the open-source Data Transfer Project and can be accessed via Facebook settings within Your Facebook Information.

The tool will enable Facebook users to transfer their Facebook photos and videos directly to other services (Google Photos first).

The first part of the roll-out is in Ireland with worldwide availability planned for the first half of 2020.  Facebook says that the tool is still essentially in testing and that it will be refined based upon feedback from users and from conversations with stakeholders

Help From The Data Transfer Project

One of the key factors in the development of the portability tool was Facebook joining the Data Transfer Project (along with Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Apple, and others) which is an open-source software project that’s designed to help participants develop interoperable systems that will enable users to transfer their data seamlessly between online service providers.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Facebook has been offering its DYI service for nearly 10 years, but the new portability tool is something which will enable Facebook to meet its legal requirements under GDPR and the CCPA while helping Facebook to stay competitive with other online services.

Facebook is also acutely aware of the damage done to user trust over the data sharing with Cambridge Analytica, which is why the recent white paper that Facebook published about its portability ideas clearly acknowledged that portability products need to be built in a privacy-protective way.

For Facebook users, this new tool may be one of the many new services that help them to be more trusting of Facebook again by making them feel that they have real options and choices about what they do with their files from Facebook (even though it’s a legal requirement to give people the portability option).

Tech Tip – Easy Timer In Google

Posted on by Andy Miller

If you need to complete a piece of work in within a certain time, or you’ve got a call to make or meeting to go to in an hour or two, there’s an easy timer reminder (and stopwatch) already built-in to Google.

To operate the timer:

– Type “start a timer” into Google.

– Choose “Timer” and enter the required time period (hours, minutes, seconds).

– Click on the “Start” button.

– A bleeping alarm will sound at the end of the time period you’ve selected.

– You can press “Reset” to get a new time goal.

The Difference Between Backup and Disaster Recovery

Posted on by Andy Miller

We’re all familiar with the value of making a backup of business data, but how does this fit with ‘Disaster Recovery’ and ‘Business Continuity’ strategies?  This article takes a brief look at how these elements fit together to ensure that businesses can survive, function and get back up to speed when disastrous events (external or internal) pose a serious threat.

Reality

Normal life rules apply to the business environment i.e. things can and do go wrong, and backup and disaster recovery are both based upon this understanding.

Business continuity in the event of a ‘disaster’, is about making sure that your essential operations and core business functions can keep running while the repairs can be made that get you back up to speed.

What Could Go Wrong?

There is a potentially huge range of ‘disasters’ that businesses could make plans to be able to overcome, and even though organisations come in different sizes and have different budgets, the risks they face are generally the same.  Typically, the more obvious ‘disaster’ threats the business include:

  • Hardware failures/server failures.
  • Outages and/or file corruption
  • The effects of cyber-attacks.  For example, 53% of senior managers believe that a cyber-attack is the most likely thing to disrupt their business (Sungard AS 2019) and the effects could include damage to / locking out of systems (malware and ransomware), fraud and extortion, data breaches (which could also attract fines under GDPR, damaging publicity and loss of customers).
  • Environmental/natural disasters e.g. fire and flood.
  • Important 3rd supplier failure or the loss of key employees.
  • Failures of part / a component of a network e.g. as highlighted by recent problems with banking and airline industry services.
  • Theft or loss of equipment holding company data.

Backing Up Your Data – Where To Store It

When it comes to backups, security, integrity, cost, scalability, complying with legislation, your own business plans, and ease of daily use are all considerations.  Where / how to store backed-up data is a decision tackled differently by different companies.  In the UK, GDPR (the data protection regulations) should be taken into account in these decisions.  Places to back up data could include:

  • On-site – storing data in the same location e.g. on an external hard drive in the workplace.  Although the data backup is close to hand, this is not a particularly secure solution and in the event of flood/fire/theft disasters, your data would be gone.
  • Off-site – taking the data away on a hard drive or another physical storage medium.  This means it’s less at risk from local issues (e.g. loss, theft, damage) but could mean it takes longer to restore data .
  • Online – backing up your data on hosted servers (in the cloud) and accessing them through an application. This is now becoming the preferred method for most businesses as it is convenient and fast (if you have an Internet connection) and it cuts out many of your on-site potential disaster risks (fire, flood, loss and damage of physical storage media).

Some businesses prefer to use a ‘hybrid’ cloud backup to help address any vulnerabilities that cloud-only or local-only backup solutions have.

There are many dedicated online backup solutions available e.g. IDrive Business, Backblaze Business, Carbonite Safem, or larger solutions for businesses with much bigger data backup requirements.

Backup Decisions

Taking regular, secure backups of your business data is an important part of good practice.  It is also an important element of disaster recovery and the business continuity process.

There are several types of backup that businesses need to make decisions about.  These include whether, if/when and how to make:

  • A full backup – one that covers every folder and file type and typically takes a long time.
  • An incremental backup – the first back up is a full one, followed by simply backing up any changes made to the previous backup.
  • A differential backup – similar to an incremental backup, requires more storage space but has a faster restore time.
  • A mirror backup – an exact copy of your data that has the advantage of removing the obsolete files each time.
  • An Image-based backup – captures images of all data and systems rather than just copying the files.
  • A clone of your hard drive – similar to imaging and creates an exact cloned drive with no compression.

In reality, many businesses make use of many different types of backup solutions at the same time.

Business Continuity, Backup Decisions and Disaster Recovery

Accepting that disasters happen and that you can plan how to maintain business continuity while you deal with them (using a disaster recovery plan) is an important step in safeguarding your business. Maintaining the ability to ensure that core functions and critical systems remain in place in the event of a disaster (business continuity) involves planning, an important part of which is the disaster recovery plan (DRP).  Creating this plan is usually an interdepartmental process, which is often led by information technology.

RTO & RPO – Linking Backups To Your DRP.

There are two metrics you can use to help you to make data backup decisions that relate to your DRP.

The Recovery Time Objective (RTO): the recovery window / how long (time) the business realistically has to recover from a disaster before there are unacceptable consequences.

The Recovery Point Objective (RPO): how far back (the maximum tolerable period of time) your organisation needs to go in recovering data that may have been lost due to a disaster.

By working out these time periods (particularly RPO), it can help you to decide upon the frequency of backups, which backup methods are most suitable and preferable to you e.g. the need to go back longer periods may favour online backups, and businesses with  large quantities of valuable historic data may struggle with a short RTO (which may require tiered data recovery).

In today’s business environment it is worth bearing in mind that your customers are not likely to be very tolerant of downtime, so recovery windows now need to be as short as possible. Many businesses, therefore, simply opt for a daily backup.

Disaster Recovery Plan

At the heart of your business disaster recovery strategy should be the disaster recovery plan (DRP) which should provide step-by-step workable instructions to ensure a fast recovery.  A DRP should be tested and kept up to date to ensure that it will work in reality in the event of a disaster and typically includes elements like:

  • A plan for roles and communications, detailing employee contact information and who’s responsible for what following the disaster.
  • A plan to safeguard equipment e.g. to keep it off the floor, wrapped in plastic away from flooding.
  • A data continuity system that details what the business needs to run in terms of operations, finances/accounts supplies, and communications.
  • Checking that your data backup regime is working, and that very recent copy is stored in a secure place but would be easily and quickly accessible when needed.
  • An asset inventory, including photos where possible, of the hardware (workstations, printers, phones, servers etc) reference for insurance claims after a major disaster.
  • Keeping (up to date) documentation that lists all vital components of your IT infrastructure, hardware and software, and a sequence of what needs to be done to resume business operations with them.
  • Photos showing that the hardware was in use by employees and that care had been taken to minimise risk e.g. items were off the floor (e.g. to avoid flood damage).
  • A supplier communication and service restoration plan so that you quickly restore services and key supplies after the disaster.
  • Details of a secondary location where your business could operate from if your primary location was too badly damaged in a disaster.
  • Details of the testing, optimisation and automation of your plan to ensure that it could be implemented quickly, as easily as possible, and free from human error.

Putting The Pieces Together

The basic difference between a backup and disaster recovery, therefore, is that a backup is having a copy of your data, and disaster recovery is the whole strategy to recover your business operations and essential IT environment in the event of a serious event e.g. cyber-attack, equipment failure, fire or flood.

Creating a DRP involves completing a risk assessment and business impact analysis in order to identify critical applications and services, and it is from here that your business can then create its own tailored RTOs and RPOs which in turn, will link to your backup strategy and cycles.

Backups are essential files that enable a full restore, and as such are an important element of ongoing good practice and of your DRP, and your backup should relate strongly to the underlying strategy of disaster recovery.

One thing is certain about backup and disaster recovery which is that having no plan for either is means planning to fail.

Hacker’s Website Closed Down In International Operation

Posted on by Andy Miller

A website (and its supporting infrastructure) which sold a variety of hacking tools to other would-be cybercriminals has been closed down after an investigation by agencies from multiple countries including the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA).

IM-RAT

The main tool that the agencies were particularly interested in eradicating was the Imminent Monitor Remote Access Trojan (IM-RAT) which is a hacking tool, of Australian origin, which has been on sale for 6 years and was available for sale via the Imminent Monitor website.

According to Europol, once installed on a victim’s computer the IM-RAT malware, which could be purchased for as little as $25, allowed cybercriminals to secretly “disable anti-virus and anti-malware software, carry out commands such as recording keystrokes, steal data and passwords and watch the victims via their webcams”.

Big International Operation

The investigation and the operation to shut down the sale of IM-RAT was led by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and involved judicial and law enforcement agencies in Europe, Colombia and Australia, and was coordinated by Europol and Eurojust.

Coordinated law enforcement activity has now ended the availability of IM-RAT, which was used across 124 countries and sold to more than 14 500 buyers. IM-RAT can no longer be used by those who bought it.

In a week of actions (in November), the international agencies dismantled the infrastructure of IM-RAT, arrested 14 of its most prolific users and seized over 430 devices for forensic analysis.

Back in June, search warrants were executed in Australia and Belgium against the developer and one employee of IM-RAT and most recently, actions to fully shut down the distribution of IM-RAT have also been taken in Australia, Colombia,  Czechia, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

In the UK, it has been reported that the NCA searched properties in Hull, Leeds, London, Manchester, Merseyside, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Somerset and Surrey in relation to the investigation.

The shutting down of the whole IM-RAT infrastructure, and the detailed analysis of the malware and the website used to sell it mean that IM-RAT can no longer be used.

Tens of Thousands of Victims

With the IM-RAT malware/hacking tool being so widely used, Europol believes that there are probably tens of thousands of victims around the world, and so far, investigators have been able to find evidence of stolen personal details, passwords, private photographs, video footage and data.

IM-RAT

Although IM-RAT allows cybercriminals to secretly take control of a computer, there are some common signs which indicate that a computer may have been infected with IM-RAT.  These signs include an unusually slow internet connection, unknown processes running in a system (which are visible in the Task Manager, Processes tab), files being modified or deleted without your permission, and unknown programs being installed on your device (visible in the Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs).

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For businesses, this kind of malware caused considerable problems, not least in terms of data protection, disruption, industrial espionage and extortion, and left their devices wide open to hackers. This internationally co-ordinated move by multiple agencies is an important step in the battle against so-called ‘crime as a service’ and bulletproof hosting where organised gangs have sought to profit from crimes that they can carry out from a distance via the Internet.

If you believe that your device may have been infected by IM-RAT, the Europol advice is to disconnect your device from the network in order to prevent any additional malicious activity, install trustworthy security software, and run a scan of your device using security software. When you’re satisfied that you’ve removed the infection, change the passwords for your online accounts and check your banking activity.

Some general steps you can take to guard against falling victim to malware include keeping your anti-virus software and patching up to date, installing a firewall, only using strong passwords (that aren’t shared across different accounts), covering up your webcam when its not in use, regularly backing up your data, and making sure that you don’t open any suspicious-looking emails and attachments even if they do come from people on your contact list.

The Battle Between ‘Slack’ and ‘Teams’

Posted on by Andy Miller

With Microsoft’s announcement that it’s Teams product has 20 million daily active users (and growing), sending Slack’s share price downwards (Slack has 12 million users), the battle is well underway in the $3.5 billion chat-based collaborative working software market.

What Is Slack?

Slack, launched in 2013, is a cloud-based set of proprietary team collaboration tools and services. It provides mobile apps for iOS and Android, and is available for the Apple Watch, enabling users to send direct messages, see mentions, and send replies.

Slack teams enable users (communities, groups, or teams) to join through a URL or invitation sent by a team admin or owner. Slack was intended to be an organisational communication tool, but it has gradually morphed into a community platform i.e. it is a business technology that has crossed over into personal use. Slack recently introduced an “email bridge” into its platform that will allow those who only have email to communicate with Slack users.  Back in May last year, ‘Slack’ introduced a new ‘Actions’ feature that made it easier for users to create and finish tasks without leaving by having access to more 3rd party tools.

In October this Year Slack announced that it has 12 million daily active users, which is 2 million increase since January.

What Is Teams?

Teams, announced in November 2016 and launched by Microsoft in 2017, is a platform designed to help collaborative working and combines features such as workplace chat, meetings, notes, and attachments. Described by Microsoft as a “complete chat and online meetings solution”, it normally integrates with the company’s Office 365 subscription office productivity suite. In July 2018, Microsoft introduced a free, basic features version of Teams which did not require an Office 365 account, in order to increase user numbers and tempt users away from Slack.

Microsoft Teams is also the replacement for Skype for Business Online, the support for which will end on 31 July 2021, and all new Microsoft 365 customers have been getting Microsoft Teams by default from 1 September 2019.

Share Tumble For Slack

Slack’s share value fell earlier this year after it announced that its projected sales growth would be lower for the second half of the year. Slack became a publicly-traded company on the New York Stock Exchange in June, and investors have been saying that it will need to maintain an impressive growth rate to compete against competitors like Microsoft (with Teams), Alphabet (Google) and Facebook.

The recent announcement by Microsoft that Teams has 20 million daily active users compared to Slack’s 12 million and has increased daily active users by more than 50% from June caused another downward push on Slack’s share value.

Slack’s Challenge – To Get More Large Paying Customers

Slack, which enjoys popularity in the U.S corporate workplace has been trying to emphasise that it is not just a chat/messaging app, but that it can connect to companies’ other applications in a way that can streamline workflows and aid real value addition and savings.  Slack is, however, facing a challenge in convincing big businesses that it is worthy, paid-for alternative to its more well-known competitors, and according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Andrew Eisenson, less than 1% of Slack’s customer base are large customers that spend more than $100,000 a year. One of the problems that Slack has is that although large companies in the US use it and like it, they currently have a free version, so Slack will have to convince them to upgrade to the paid-for version.

Despite having lower user numbers than Teams, some tech commentators have noted that Slack has stickiness and strong user engagement which help to attract businesses that want to get into using workstream collaboration software.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Microsoft has the advantage of a very well-known and trusted brand with huge reach, Teams already integrates with Office 365’s subscription office productivity suite, and there’s now a free version that doesn’t even require an Office 365 account.  Also, Teams is set to replace Skype for Business Online next year, and Microsoft has made sure that Skype for Business Online customers know that Microsoft’s investment and interoperability will make the migration to Teams a fairly painless one.

All this means that Teams appears to be in a very good position to continue what has been a rapid growth this year, and despite Slack’s positive features, Slack will have to fight hard to get big businesses interested in order to compete.

For users, there are now several good collaborative working services to choose from, but at the present time, the facts that investors don’t know when Slack is going to be profitable, coupled with a fall in revenue have led some commentators to think that Teams is looking as though it could come out on top.