Biden turns to Congress to limit targeted social media ads for kids.

As the New York Times reports, President Biden is eager to shield children from obscene internet content presented in ads. Moreover, he is planning a broader campaign for the mental health of the younger generation, as he reveals in his first State of the Union speech.

“It’s time to strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising to children, demand tech companies stop collecting personal data on our children,” he declares.

The interaction of kids with social media can be extremely harmful and damaging. Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, leaked some of the documents that state Meta was aware they made teenagers feel bad about themselves. Extreme and obscene content is shown to young people, which causes mental illnesses by diminishing kids’ self-worth.

One of the solutions Biden suggests is to ban targeted ads aimed at children, Bloomberg states. The process will take some time to obtain funding and become a full legal act, and meanwhile, you could protect your kids or yourself from the harmful side of the internet in a couple of clicks with a web filtering solution.

SafeDNS offers different kinds of plans tailored to your needs.

Get your 15-day Free Trial and see for yourself!

In its last year’s report, FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) compared economic losses from cyberattacks on just one MSP supplier with those from hurricane Sandy. The losses from cyberattacks were 17% higher!

Cyberattacks pose a threat not only to small businesses, but also to national infrastructure as well as US governmental agencies.

An example of such an attack in 2021 is malware integration into MSP provider infrastructure that used VSA Kaseya local software.

Experts believe that hackers use a phishing scheme to penetrate the provider’s network, thus gaining access to clients and remaining unnoticed for extended periods of time. Hundreds of businesses nationwide may become victims of the phishing software threatening operation of various industries and critical infrastructure facilities. This will lead to about $80 bln in losses.

Underestimating such risks is unacceptable, which is why it is necessary to take measures, including changes in federal law. One of the most important additions must be a law enforcing notification about cyberattacks on companies and regulating cybersecurity measures for small, medium and big businesses.

Certain work in the field is already being done. Thus, a draft law by senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio suggests that all critical infrastructure owners and contractors must inform federal authorities about cyberattacks within 24 hours since the moment of such violation. Currently these reports are voluntary and sent to state authorities.

US Congress is also working on requirements to private companies obliging them to notify about cybersecurity breaches in their networks that may pose threat to federal structures.

CCTI recommends:

· To include cybersecurity report requirements into Sarbanes-Oxley act for all public companies.

· Cybersecurity reports to include an estimate of economic losses.

· To create a cybersecurity manual for small and medium businesses.

Gartner Digital Markets announced that in year 2021 SafeDNS had outperformed by consistently getting featured in multiple GDM flagship reports including “Cybersecurity Software”.

Last year SafeDNS stood out from the competitors and gained an overall score of 4.7 (out of 5) across all three Gartner Digital Markets sites: Capterra, Software Advice, and GetApp.

The badges were obtained thanks to customized solutions that meet our clients’ demands by professional tech support, affordable price and a cutting-edge technology of DNS filtering.

Here’s a review of one of our customers as another confirmation:

“SafeDNS is a really great product, we have been using it for over 5 years now and it’s really robust. We deploy for all our customers internal networks and this includes our Azure infrastructure and it just works.”

~ Jason T. ~

In 2022 cyberattacks will be even more elaborate than in the previous years. The number of cyberattacks will increase, too. This is the forecast made by experts in cybersecurity, Check Point Research (CPR).

Attacks will mostly be aimed at supply chains for medium and big businesses. In 2021 Kaseya and SolarWinds brands fell victims of such attacks.

These are the technologies to be used by cybercriminals this year:

· Fake news

Cybercriminals will be creating and spreading fake news for fraud and phishing attacks. They are going to use AI and deepfake to make photos and videos with the aim to steal confidential information.

· Personal data theft

Theft of personal data of companies’ employees, clients and business partners is becoming more and more large-scale. Attackers are getting greedier, and ransom amounts are going to continue to grow.

· Using mobile malware

With mobile payment systems being used more frequently, malware attacks on consumers’ mobile devices in order to steal more will also become more frequent.

· Large-scale online attacks using new technology

Cybercriminals are keeping up with companies thatconstantly improve technologies and infrastructure to boost their security systems. In the current year criminals will be penetrating company networks using security system testing tools. Such attacks may lead to global failures in company operations.

· Cryptocurrency attacks

Attackers will be turning more attention to hacking crypto exchanges. They will be motivated by last year’s successful cyberattacks, Africryft hack being one of them. As a result of the attack on the South African crypto platform investors lost about $3.6 bln.Active growth of such crimes is expected this year.

Company managements should stay alert and work towards cybercrime prevention by securing every bit of their networks with the use of optimal solutions that will reveal and block more and more elaborate and global cyberattacks.

Small businesses have been growing since the beginning of the pandemic thanks to digital transformation allowing them to open cost-efficiently. However, it brings the disadvantages of relying on the internet.

Just like any business is growing, viruses, ransomware, malware, and phishing have been growing over the past years, and attacks are expected to double in 2022 according to cybersecurity specialists. It doesn’t mean that we should just watch it happen, cybersecurity has been improving as well. Antiviruses are getting better, DNS protection is performing greatly with AI/ML systems, and now we have a lot of free training courses that help avoid cyberattacks.

To stay safe in 2022, our cybersecurity specialists advise you to do the following:

Multifactor authentication (MFA)

Attackers usually avoid those who use MFA due to a strong protection layer it adds to the user’s security. MFA is deployed easily, and it is highly recommended to be used.

Training

Cybersecurity training isn’t only made for big organizations, SMEs are usually even more attractive to hackers due to the lack of their cybersecurity. If the company cannot afford long-term courses, it can enroll into a few shorter ones over a longer period of time. This will help employees to raise cybersecurity awareness, thus using strong passwords and avoiding suspicious downloads or phishing emails.

DNS Filtering

A new trendy feature that is very easy to deploy and requires no hardware or IT background. This service can be installed on the network level to protect all users from malicious content and eliminate it before it even reaches the user’s network. DNS filtering comes with a lot of other features besides protection against malicious content, such as blocking unwanted websites like time wasters or social networks.

Antivirus

DNS Filtering usually should be enough, but if the user accidentally allows malicious content to be downloaded on their device, here comes the Antivirus alerting about the risks and deleting the malicious content that has been downloaded.

We are happy to announce that SafeDNS web-filtering service has won the Best Value Software award at SoftwareSuggest Winter Recognition Awards 2022.

To quote SoftwareSuggest, “To save businesses’ resources and prevent their staff from wasting work time SafeDNS provides a sophisticated cloud-based solution for web filtering which also increases users’ safety online by blocking botnets, malware, and phishing resources filter out most internet ads and content users consider irrelevant and inappropriate.”

SafeDNS team would like to thank SoftwareSuggest for their high appraisal, as well as our partners and customers for their trust and feedback. They always help us work towards improving our service.

Not every cybersecurity threat is ransomware. Phishing is cybersecurity’s biggest threat. It’s one of the most common ways hackers can infiltrate your organization, and it can result in much more than identity theft.

Back in the 4th quarter of 2021, we were looking at a credential-stealing phishing attack on LinkedIn. The phishing email was sent from a compromised university email account and hosted its phishing page on Google Forms. The email claimed that the victims’ LinkedIn account had been suspended due to unusual activity and invited them to verify their account if they wanted to restore access.

This email attack employed the whole gamut of techniques to get past traditional email security filters and play a hoax on unsuspecting victims.

In the end of 2021, in December to be exact, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, filed a lawsuit in a California court against the operators of more than 39,000 phishing sites that have been hosted through the Ngrok service.

According to legal analysts, those lawsuits won’t go anywhere, but the reason for them to exist is that Meta is trying to say they are capable of identifying who is behind the phishing campaigns.

According to cybersecurity specialists, phishing attacks are very likely going to increase by 30%. And they are recommending both individuals and business owners to take all security precautions to decrease the risks of falling victim to one of those attacks.

· Difficulties in controlling app security risks

Many companies use SaaS apps in their work more and more often, especially when their employees must work remotely. This is when they hit a problem: it is necessary to adjust security settings correctly for each app considering their configurations. As there are many such apps, security departments are forced to do major volumes of work and are not always maximally efficient.

· Low level of knowledge in cybersecurity rules by privileged users

Employees who do not follow cybersecurity rules and have expanded access put confidential information at the threat of being hacked and increase the risk of it being revealed. And because SaaS use continues to grow, there appears the necessity for control of employees’ access to apps.

· Phishing via SaaS

Criminals attack companies’ email via SaaS using the following scheme:

– Criminals send an email with OAuth app.

– An employee follows the link and logs in to their account.

– The app requests access to emails.

– The employee accepts the request.

– OAuth token is created, which is subsequently used by the cybercriminal to gain access to and control email or the whole disc.

– The criminal encodes the disc and the user can get access to it back only after they  have paid ransom.

This is how ransomware works. Other types of cyberattacks can be organized using OAuth app as well.

Having installed special apps for protection against cyberattacks or using cloud services companies can protect themselves from such cyberattacks and identify changes in cybersecurity settings and SaaS apps in timely manner.