01 Dec 2021
You better watch out...I'm telling you why, smishing is coming to town!
Hello Santa, hello smishing
The Christmas holidays have joined EOFY tax return time as a prime target for smishing scams.
At a time of the year when we are making multiple online purchases and anxiously waiting on parcel deliveries, it is inevitable that scammers will attempt to take advantage of our inattention, or send us messages that align with what we could conceivably expect to receive. Smishing scams succeed because they look like the real thing and catch us off guard when we’re not expecting it.
What is smishing?
A mash-up of SMS and phishing. Smishing is the attempt to steal our money, identity or both with the hook being an text message leading us to a web form to complete.
Who is getting caught out by smishing?
If you are a man between the ages of 45-54 years and live in Queensland, you are among the most susceptible group of Australians falling for phishing/smishing scams during 2021, according the the ACCC Scamwatch statistics.
How can organisations protect against smishing?
There are two key approaches to protect employees and organisations against smishing threats
- End user education
- Corporate-applied threat defence applications
- Air-Gapped Web Isolation security
1. End User Education
Most obviously this approach includes
- communicating with employees to raise awareness and vigilance levels
- highlighting specific threats as they begin to circulate in the community
- providing instructions for how to identify and deal with threats
2. Corporate-Applied Threat Defence Applications
There are a range of products on the market which provide threat detection and defence at endpoint layer.
We use Jamf Protect for Endpoint Security but a simple Google search will reveal others.
Jamf Protect is best suited to Apple endpoints, although can now be expanded to Windows and Android endpoints.
Jamf's secure access layer goes beyond the endpoint to detect phishing threats in real time. Jamf's threat intelligence engine MI:RIAM constantly scans the internet for malicious sites calculating risk scores based on over 100 indicators to automatically block access to malicious URLs.
Jamf also applies a continuous risk assessment of endpoints before enabling access to the corporate network. If an endpoint is compromised or at high risk, access can be denied.
3. Air-Gapped Web Isolation Endpoint Security
A new development in the world of endpoint security is the Ericsson-Ericom web isolation security solution.
This solution provides secure, clientless access for all endpoints including BYOD and unmanaged devices.
Essentially this air-grapped solution will cloak web applications to protect attack surfaces from hackers.
Part of the Ericsson portfolio, Web Application Isolation secures exposed surfaces of web apps, protecting them from malware on compromised devices and bad actors, while enabling full access for legitimate users.
Hackers or malware attempting to probe web apps for vulnerabilities to exploit have no visibility to page source code, developer tools or APIs. Instead, they’ll see only a few lines of Remote Browser Isolation HTML.
About MobileCorp
MobileCorp is a Sydney-based communications technology company. We support enterprise and business by providing managed endpoints and ICT services including mobile device security, mobile device management, expense management and managed connectivity solutions. We are an Apple Authorised Reseller, a Samsung Authorised Reseller, and a Android Enterprise Reseller. We are also a Wandera/Jamf Partner, a Telstra Platinum Mobility Partner and Telstra accredited 5G specialist partner.
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