According to the Wall Street Journal, wire fraud cases are up dramatically because of the high amounts and relative ease of doing a wire transfer. This may be a problem for small to midsized businesses that have little or no risk assessment policies in place.

Here’s how the scam works.

Your finance person will get an email that looks like its coming from a legitimate source – the owner, a major client, a big bank. The email requests a relatively high number – in the $140-$170k area – but not so high that is raises alarm bells. They usually work quickly, and request that you attend to the matter promptly. And as soon as it’s gone, it can’t be recalled.

Here are some examples of how the fraud looks.

Let’s just say your finance wire person is Sara, and your name is “Bill Smith”. Her email is Sara@controllers.com and she receives an email from you at Bill@controllers.com. And “Bill” is requesting a wire transfer.

Here are some variations of the email address that can trick your eye into believing the email in front of you:

This can be incredibly deceiving when it’s thrown into the very busy day of someone trying to get his or her work done. NOTE: If you are using Outlook – the fraud is even worse because the email addresses are not shown by default, but only the display name. So you will not see Bill@controllers.com, but rather an email from “Bill Smith”.

Prevent this through double-verification.

By creating a double-verification policy, you can prevent this crime from happening to you. Here are some ways to verify a wire transfer:

Put these procedures into place as soon as possible. Trust, but verify.

Have you heard Microsoft’s recent announcements that their browser is not secure? These news stories about “exploits” of the browser are not actually news. Microsoft’s browsers (all of them, versions 6-11) have always been susceptible to hacks and this has been widely known in the tech community for years.

If you want to avoid problems, don’t ask yourself “What browser am I using?” Ask yourself “Where am I going on the Internet?”.

Regardless of what browser you use, whether it is Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, or Mozilla’s Firefox, YOU CAN ALWAYS GET INFECTED. It’s NOT about the browser, it’s about the user’s behavior online.

In today’s world, viruses, hacks, exploits, and other malicious software come hidden primarily in two packages: Email and unknown websites (especially with pop-ups). That’s it! For the most part, when you close up these two channels, you’ve essentially locked out about 99% of everything bad that can happen to your network. Of course there are other ways into your network (like an infected USB drive), but that doesn’t involve Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browsing software.

The best way to avoid a problem?

Be careful when doing two things:

A) Opening email – do not open emails or click on any links in emails that have these characteristics:
a. Unknown source
b. Known source with unexpected Subject line
c. And NEVER EVER click on an .exe file.

B) Surfing – avoid sites that have these characteristics:
A strange address – anything that you don’t readily identify as a legitimate company, should raise your awareness. www.macys.com for example clearly shows that you’re going to the department store’s official website. An address that doesn’t end with “.com” or “.us” should tell you that you’re leaving the United States for the most part. Even “.net” extensions should raise some eyebrows unless you’ve been there before and it’s legitimate.
Sites with a lot of ads that require you to click multiple times before you get to where you’re searching. Pop-up ads are another dead giveaway. They make you waste time closing them in order for the site to load its deadly computer code.
Sites that you’ve never been to that were not recommended by a friend, but rather found randomly through a Google search should raise a flag. Just because Google gave you the search does NOT mean, it’s legitimate. Google searches for key words – not malicious virus content. This means that even virus-infected websites will show up on Google’s search engine.

You actually have a lot of control over the security of your own system! Just be careful.

All of that said, an interesting business question to ponder is: Why is Microsoft releasing this “news” now? They say there was another exploit that makes every version of their browser susceptible to yet another attack. They say “we’ll have a fix, but it won’t work on Windows XP?” Why all of these announcements? Could it be because people just aren’t jumping to (the underwhelming, mediocre, latest Microsoft fad) Windows 8.x? Could they actually be trying to SCARE people into buying this new product? Hmmm…

It might be cheap now, but what’s the total cost of ownership?

I heard this “Buy the best, cry once” phrase about 20 years ago and it always stuck with me.  It means that when you make a purchase, you should always consider the total cost of ownership and not just the initial price. Budgets are always tight, and we all look for low-cost solutions, but the cheapest products can end up costing the most in the long run. Here’s how.

1. You get what you pay for.  Just about every small business purchases equipment from a large technical store.  They walk in and explain that they need a computer for their small business.  Because budgets are tight, they purchase the cheapest thing they can find and as a result it works slowly, inefficiently, or hardly at all. Fixes and maintenance can cost more than the machine itself.

2.  The lost-cost software is modeled for home use and wastes your employees’ time. The problem with the “home editions” of software is that they are invariably filled with “bloat ware”, or “starter programs” that will distract you for doing your business and slow you down.  Add to this the multiple pop-up alerts. Waiting for your machine to start up, and waiting for your machine to finally get you to your Outlook, or Word document.  One might figure, eh, it’s just a few minutes.  Oh really?  Add that up, and multiply that across the board for a year.  How much is your time worth?  You’ll be surprised how expensive that cheap machine actually is.

3.  Upgrading later costs time and money.  Adding a server to your network when your business expands becomes very complicated with “low end” machines.   In a traditional “Microsoft network” world, Microsoft requires “professional” editions in order for their workstations to be networked properly.  Performing the “upgrade” is far more expensive when you add in your time, or an engineer, as well as the upgrade software.  It’s actually less expensive if you purchased this right up front.  Think future growth when you purchase.

Making technology purchases is difficult.

Researching products, considering the options, and determining if they are right for you takes time. That’s time you would probably rather spend with your customers, growing your business. You can’t trust salespeople in large tech stores because they mostly work on commission and they would sell you the Brooklyn Bridge if they could.

We can help.  Since we do not sell any hardware of software, we can be extremely objective about what our customers need.  Matching the right technology to your business need is our specialty.

Contact us here: http://www.rendezviewinc.com/contact-us

Or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rview.us

-jdg, RendezView

Where do viruses come from? For the most part, viruses infect your computers from three places: the Internet, email, and USB thumb drives. If you protect your business against these, you can prevent a problem before it ever starts.

Anti-virus software gives businesses a false sense of security because it makes employees think that they are safe and free to roam on the Internet and open mysterious emails without fear. WRONG! Computers get infected even with anti-virus software and the total costs of using workstation-based anti-virus software are much higher than they seem. Apple Macs included.

For a small business, Anti-Virus for individual workstations can be quite expensive.  A basic 1-year subscription will run you about $30-$50 per person.  Having an office of 30 employees puts this price at about $900-$1500 a year.

This might be all well and good if that were the end of the story.  But experience tells us it’s not the end of the story.  In a case study that we performed, we found that malware and viruses on a regular basis were STILL infecting employees’ workstations and there were many HIDDEN COSTS involved with Anti-Virus installations at the workstations including:

• The time spent on installation and updates at each workstation
• The costs of an inefficient workstation being bogged down by the constant scanning of the workstation’s files
• The cost of time being wasted on the very real possibility of not being able to access valid and important data due to “false positive” prevention
• The costs to rid an infection by a technical engineer
• The opportunity costs of an employee not being able to work
• The potential costs of losing intellectual property
• The risk of damaging the company’s external image to their clients

Is there a better solution? Yes. You can prevent viruses by introducing protection across the entire business rather than at the workstation level. This is a four-part solution:

• A security audit – a review of the current systems to ensure that there are no vulnerabilities
• A cultural change – employee training on what to watch-out for and how to avoid problems
• A firewall preventing employees from accessing problematic websites – with laser precision we can block certain sites from general employee use; this will increase productivity and prevent problems; management can be excluded from these firewalls allowing you to tailor the solution to fit your company needs
• Back-ups easily accessible and ready to be installed – ensure that your back-ups are ready for action

By preventing viruses at the business-level rather than at the workstation, you can free up every workstation to operate at its computing power and increase productivity at the same time. If you want to learn more, contact me here: http://www.rendezviewinc.com/contact-us/

-jdg, RendezView

INFECTION INCLUDES and are not limited to any Network Drives, Shared Drives, Drop Box Connections and drives, USP Thumb drives and external drives that are connected to the computer that becomes infected.  The files (which also can be Word, Excel, and picture files (.jpg) ) are no longer usable after infection!!

This is an important reminder to be vigilant when accessing your email, especially email attachments. If you have any doubts about the email and/or attachment you should contact and confirm with the individual or company that sent you the email before opening it.

• Examples: filename.DOC changed to filename.EXE
• In particular for this virus the following files have been found:
  • Porn.EXE, Sexy.EXE, Secret.EXE
  • x.mpeg, autorun.inf

Do not click on, touch, double-click, highlight, etc. any “EXE” files.

Emails that reference Credit, Credit Cards, Bank Accounts, UPS, FedEx, etc. are almost always spam and/or contain viruses. These companies will never send you an email with an attachment.

If something looks suspicious then it is suspicious.