Organizations are Not Managing People and Awareness Ongoing…Do you Know Who is? June 1, 2010 By Katie Weaver

Cyber Criminals, Terrorists, Competition, Social Networks, etc.

A few weeks ago, security vendor McAfee caused widespread concern when it revealed that a problem with its antivirus product caused some Windows XP systems to crash.

Who was the first to react to this incident?

Cyber criminals. By utilizing advanced blackhat search engine optimization techniques, criminals were able to ensure that their malicious web pages were returned first in a search for information regarding McAfee. When clicked, the malicious links infect the Users with scareware and trick them into thinking they are infected and must pay a fee for antivirus software to fix the problem.

Now more than ever, breaking news is being hijacked by cyber criminals, often before you (or your employees) may have even learned of it.

We have seen criminals take advantage of many recent events, the Icelandic volcano, pandemic flu, the economic crisis or celebrity stories.So, how can you protect your employees and your organization from falling prey to these social attacks?

Ongoing awareness and lessons learned. It is critical for organizations to continuously update their employees and third-parties on new risks, new threats, best practices, etc. as risks (and bad guys) are sophisticated and constantly changing.

We recommend that organizations utilize real-world lessons learned (like the McAfee incident above) to illustrate to employees the threats that exist and how they can protect themselves and their organizations. Your organization can pair this case study with a policy reminding Users they cannot afford to blindly trust the results offered by search engines, but rather they must verify that the sites they are visiting are secured and trusted.

Once-a-year General Training is Not Enough. How are you ensuring your employees and third-parties are updated ongoing with improved situational awareness and accountability?

About Awareity

Awareity is a privately held organization founded in 2002. Awareity's innovative e-Management solutions empower organizations to 'connect the dots' and offer a unique focus on implementing lessons learned across several critical areas of business – compliance, information assurance, public safety, emergency management, enterprise risk management and reputation management.

Awareity’s solutions are helping organizations across multiple industries - education, financial, government, healthcare and other critical industries – to achieve better results by ensuring lessons learned become lessons implemented and the right information is shared with the right people in the right place at the right time with accountability and auditability at the individual-level. Awareity's solutions simplify complex challenges, reduce current and ongoing costs and improve efficiencies as obligations continue to mount and budgets and resources are limited.

Better Knowledge. Better Decisions. Better Results.

www.awareity.com