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There is one extremely common threat to our security that nearly everyone has witnessed but hardly anyone talks about – bad bots. These silent attackers are often thought of as annoying spam accounts posting computer-generated comments online. They are so common that most of us tend to scroll by them without noticing, but in reality, bad bots are much more dangerous, particularly for business owners.

What Are Bad Bots?

Bad bots are software applications that are programmed to run automated tasks with malicious intent, such as brute force attacks, data mining, ad fraud and more. These stealthy assailants are the tireless, automated “employees” of cybercriminals that help them wreak havoc at scale. And they are everywhere. A study by Imperva revealed that of all Internet traffic in 2022, 47.4% was made up of these automated bots.

The activities of these bad bots can range from annoying to outright malicious. The most common ones we see that can affect any business are:

Reputation Attacks: Bots can be configured to leave comments on your social media or website with malicious codes and links, post provocative or spammy comments, leave scathing reviews and so on, all of which affect consumer trust.

Web Scraping: Bad bots can scrape your website for valuable data, such as pricing information or customer reviews, which they might use for various purposes, including undercutting your prices or selling your data to competitors. They could also use it to duplicate your website and set up phishing scams to trick visitors.

This can be particularly dangerous for industries with sensitive data, like health care. Bots can scrape sensitive health information, such as patient records, medical history and insurance information, which is often later sold on the dark web for profit.

Brute Force Attacks: These bots attempt to gain unauthorized access to your systems by repeatedly guessing passwords, making your accounts vulnerable to breaches. This is a popular tactic against financial services companies. If cybercriminals get access to accounts that contain sensitive financial information, they can open up new credit card accounts.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks: Bad bots can be used to launch DDoS attacks, overwhelming your website or online services with traffic and causing downtime.

Ad Fraud: Some bots engage in click fraud, repeatedly clicking on online ads to deplete your advertising budget without delivering real human engagement. This will skew analytics and often lead to poor decision-making for the marketing department.

Detecting bad bots can be challenging since they often mimic human behavior. The hardest ones to identify are evasive bots, which get their name from their ability to sidestep security by cycling through random IPs, rapidly changing their identities, mimicking human behavior and defeating CAPTCHA challenges. However, there are a few methods to help you identify bad bot attacks:

Watch Traffic Patterns: Monitor website traffic patterns for irregularities, such as high traffic from a single IP address or a single region.

Monitor All Comments Sections: Check in regularly on social media sites for spam comments or fake bad reviews and delete them.

Use CAPTCHA Challenges: Implement CAPTCHA challenges or bot detection tools to filter out automated traffic automatically.

Implement Anomaly Detection: Use anomaly detection algorithms to spot unusual behavior, like rapid data scraping or suspicious login attempts.

Track Bot Signatures: Maintain a list of known bot signatures and compare incoming traffic against it.

If you notice repeated issues, there are a few actions you can take, such as:

Educate Your Team: Train your employees to recognize and report suspicious activities, as humans are often the first line of defense. Create a process that includes who to notify and what steps to take when each issue is noticed.

Use Bot Detection Solutions: Invest in bot detection software or services that can help identify and block bad bot traffic.

Maintain Regular Updates: Keep your software and security systems updated to patch vulnerabilities that bots may exploit.

Implement Rate Limiting: Limit the number of requests an IP address can make in a given time frame to thwart scraping attempts.

Hire An IT Professional: Bots are tricky. IT companies deal with them regularly and have advanced solutions that can help eliminate these annoying and dangerous issues for you.

The impact of bad bots on business owners can be significant and lead to financial losses, reputational damage and legal complications. If you’re worried about bad bots causing a problem for your organization, schedule a FREE 10-Minute Discovery Call and we’ll help figure out where your company is vulnerable and how you can protect yourself and your business today. Click here to book now.

When you run your own business, it feels like there are never enough hours in the day. Even when you start early and end late, there’s always something else, another e-mail or task, nagging for your attention. If you want to be productive, and ultimately successful, it’s important to prioritize what tasks you’ll allow to fill your schedule. Not everything needs to be or should be done by you.  

Easier said than done. One of the issues we frequently see business owners struggle with is to delegate the tasks they don’t need to be doing. “It’s faster if I just do it” and “They won’t do it like I do” are two statements we often hear. For some tasks, that’s probably true, and those should stay on your plate, but when it comes to IT and technology, there are always several tasks business owners are doing themselves that they could and should hand off to someone else.  

Some are obvious, like security. Quality cyber security requires 24/7 monitoring, and it’s unrealistic for busy business owners to be able to handle that effectively. They simply have too much to do! Another mistake is when they hand it off to an employee, family member or friend to do for them. These people are typically not qualified to protect you correctly.  

However, there are dozens of other to-dos that you might not realize you can hand off to your IT team Here are 10 tasks you can delegate to your IT team so you can focus on running your business. 

1. Fix or Optimize Wi-Fi – Whether your Wi-Fi is down, you need to extend coverage area or something else, you don’t have to crawl around unplugging and plugging your router. Your IT team can handle it. 
2. Install and Set Up Microsoft Teams – If you’re using tools like Zoom, Slack and project management software, moving to Microsoft Teams can enhance productivity. It facilitates direct communication, project management and collaboration and has over 1,900 applications you can use. IT professionals can set all this up for you and train your team how to use it properly.
3. Manage User Access Permissions and Credentials – Your IT team can handle getting new employees their correct user access, immediately revoking access for fired employees or those who quit and everything in between. 
4. Procuring and Provisioning Devices – If you need laptops, desktops, tablets, mobile devices, etc., sourced for the best price and configured for use, that’s a tech team task. 
5. Providing Tech Support To Employees – No more troubleshooting questions for you! Your team can submit tech tickets for a quick, efficient response from support. 
6. Set Up Dual Monitors – Want to increase productivity and efficiency? IT can set up dual monitors, correctly hooking everything up, so your team can come in and start working instead of trying to DIY it. 
7. Speed Up Computers To Run Efficiently – If your computer is running slow, don’t go to Google looking for tips. Call your IT team. They can help you improve your computer speed.
8. Install E-mail/Spam Protection – No more filtering out dangerous or annoying spam e-mails; IT will do it for you. 
9. Configure Office Equipment – New printer? No problem. IT can help set it up.
10. Employee Screen Monitoring – Are your employees working when they say they are? We can help you find out by setting up software to track activity.   

And the list goes on. IT providers can also aid with HIPAA, CMMC and PCI compliance, file sharing for external/remote access users, data loss recovery plans, office relocation, cabling and so much more. Most business owners we consult with are surprised by the number of responsibilities a tech team can take on beyond cyber security. 

The best thing to do is book a FREE Network Assessment. During this assessment, our team will look at your entire system for areas of opportunity and improvement. We’ll conduct a full audit, provide you with a plan of action to optimize your business for productivity, efficiency and security, and answer any questions you have. Click here to book your Assessment now.

The Norton LifeLock Email Scam Unveiled

In today’s digital age, our personal information is more vulnerable than ever. Cybercriminals are constantly devising new and sophisticated methods to exploit unsuspecting individuals. One such threat is the Norton LifeLock email scam, a deceptive scheme that targets its victims with the promise of renewing your security while actually compromising information and safety. See sample image below.

The Norton LifeLock email scam operates under the guise of a you as a user renewing your subscription to their service, leveraging the trusted reputation of the Norton brand. Victims receive emails claiming to be from Norton LifeLock, stating that your Norton Internet Security has been successful renewed for a certain amount.

The scam normally preys on the account holders fear that their account had already been charged. Yes, these emails often contain urgent language, playing on fears of a large chunk of money has been charged on their account thus coercing recipients into taking immediate action. If you got really got charged with $353, you would certainly have it disputed with Norton as who they claim to be. Whoever you end up talking on the phone with you, they would try their best to get as much information from you to try to get the money for real.

Lo and behold, the alleged Refund Team is not Norton’s phone number. It is the number of the people scamming you.

Recognizing the signs of a email scam is crucial for protecting yourself and your personal information:

• Unsolicited Emails: Be wary of emails you didn’t expect or didn’t sign up for, especially those requesting personal information, payments, refunds or immediate action.
• Spelling and Grammar Errors: Scammers often make mistakes in language that a legitimate company would not. Pay attention to typos, awkward phrasing, or inconsistent formatting.
• Urgency and Pressure Tactics: Scammers often create a sense of urgency to pressure victims into making hasty decisions. Be cautious of emails that demand immediate action.
• Suspicious Links or Attachments: Avoid clicking on links or downloading attachments from unfamiliar sources. Hover over links to view the actual URL before clicking. (some scam campaigns variants do not include website links or attachments)
• Check the Sender’s Email Address: Verify that the email address matches the official domain of Norton LifeLock. Scammers often use slightly altered domain names to deceive recipients.

Always be Cautious with Personal Information: Avoid sharing sensitive information via phone, email or on unsecured websites. Legitimate companies typically request such information through secure channels.

These email scams get recycled and updated to suit the scammers needs, today it is Norton, tomorrow they might pretend to be Bank of America, Chase, FedEx, DHL, PayPal or something else.