Industries often forget that it’s not only banks or high tech companies that are targeted by hackers or cybercriminals. Rather, any organization can become a target, for access to personal or corporate information, or as a potential victim of ransomware or a phishing attack.
Speaking in a session for Buildex Vancouver of the threat such attacks pose to the construction industry, Shane Troyer, a business risk services leader for Grant Thornton LLP, said “A lot of people think about cyber security as protecting what is stored on your computer, but really it’s about protecting the broader system of communicating information, whether that is over the phone, by email, by scanner, by fax – all of these things have elements of cyber risk.” (Troyers’ remarks were reported by Construct Connect.)
Speaking of common methods of targeting companies, Troyer mentions attacks such as spear phishing, which looks to use specific information on individuals and organizations to trick a company into sending money or data to a fake account. Specifically, Troyer talked of a mining company that only managed to avoid losing $8 million to a phishing email because the CFO noticed the email was signed with an unabbreviated name.
Similarly, Troyer noted that smaller organizations are often particularly vulnerable to cyberattacks, as they frequently have more limited cybersecurity measures. To help assuage this, he recommends investing in cybersecurity training for employees, so as to better prepare them to identify potential threats.
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