There are several kinds of fraud and various facets of nefarious actions that results in fraudulent activity. One of the more pervasive and challenging in the past decade is ransomware. Open Access Government brought this topic to us in their article, “Controlling the top cause of ransomware – social engineering.”

It thrives in the digital world and especially during the pandemic, we saw unprecedented levels of this attack tactic. From the assaults on various water supply companies, to the Colonial Pipeline and frequent attacks on healthcare systems – there have been some extremely high-profile ransomware attacks and many more that have flown under the radar.

What’s clear is that businesses of any size are potential targets for indiscriminate cybercriminals.

What has been made clear is social engineering is by far the highest root cause for allowing ransomware to get into organizations. Social engineering includes tactics like phishing, vishing and any tricks a hacker can use to get employees to click on a malicious link.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the intelligence and the technology behind world-class explainable AI solutions.