A series of online accounting-specific scams popped up in recent months, prompting cybersecurity experts to take notice.

Late August saw a series of very similar phishing scams make a brief appearance in the inboxes of online accounting software consumers. By spoofing well-known online accounting software companies, these phishing scams have targeted a large number of consumers in an attempt to sneak banking trojans past their cyber defenses in order to steal banking data and other forms of personal information.

Customers of Xero, MYOB, Quickbooks, and Dropbox received phishing emails that contained legitimate looking invoices that would prompt the recipient to download a zip file that contains a malicious JavaScript file. This JavaScript file quietly executes the banking trojan – a version of Dridex malware – onto the user’s computer.

Once this malware is inside of your system, it will seek out banking data for the hacker behind the phishing scam to use as they please.

Online Accounting Users Should Exercise Caution

While email communication from these online accounting companies to their users isn’t unusual, it’s important to take notice of messages that seem out of the ordinary. Unexpected or suspicious-seeming messages should be handled with caution, especially when they come with strange attachments or embedded links. You should never download a zip file coming from an unknown source – a common indicator of a phishing scam – and it’s never a good idea to execute an unknown file format like JavaScript – especially since more and more malware is using this file format to distribute itself to unsuspecting victims.

You know what typical correspondence from your online accounting software provider looks like. Anything that feels wrong to you probably is, and where the security of your sensitive business information is concerned, you can never be too careful. Despite the best efforts of those in the cybersecurity industry, these types of phishing attacks continue to be effective in part because they evolve too fast for the experts to stay ahead of.

Luckily, a lot of these attacks can be stopped in their tracks as long as you and your team are paying attention.

Protect Your Online Accounting Information With Next-Gen Security

Fighting back against cybercrime in its many forms is an ongoing battle, but for every advancement the hackers make, the security industry is making advancements of their own.

Next-generation cybersecurity solutions are tipping the scales back in your business’ favor by offering anti-virus, anti-malware, and firewall software that boosts your defenses against the vulnerabilities and exploits cybercriminals take advantage of. The stronger and more capable your endpoint projections are, the lower your risk of falling victim to a data breach or serious malware infection – and with phishing scams continuing to impact businesses of all sizes, the more obstacles you can throw in a hackers path, the better.

The need to have top-notch IT security solutions in place regardless of the size of your operations hasn’t escaped our notice. Vertical IT offers a complete range of next-generation security solutions to protect your business from threats that are simply more than basic security measures can stand up to.

Our next-generation anti-virus solution offers your business:

• Remediation-as-a-Service
• Added defense against security exploits and phishing attempts
• Encrypted restoration points for added protection against ransomware
• Continuous monitoring of your anti-virus and firewall software

Our employee cybersecurity training services add a much-needed extra layer of protection by educating your team on phishing awareness and helping to make sure that when these types of scams start making the rounds, your staff has the know-how needed to outsmart these hackers. It’s not just your online accounting software that has the potential to be targeted in this way.

Aside from having a predictable end goal, the bulk of these phishing attempts follow the same pattern and rely on the same tricks and tactics in order to work. They also tend to rely heavily on cooperation from their targets, which means they’re counting on someone inside your business falling for their ruse and unintentionally helping them get what they want. These digital crimes have a surprisingly big human element to them, and when you take away a hacker’s ability to manipulate that human element, their threats become much less dangerous.

Having smart and capable employees complimenting your cybersecurity safeguards is as close to the perfect IT security solution as you can get. Training your employees is important, but accepting that humans are prone to making mistakes and having the right protections in place is just as important.

Cybercriminals are getting smarter, but so are the security solutions businesses have at their disposal to protect their digital assets like online accounting data, client information, and any other mission-critical data your business relies on and is responsible for.

Ready to put enterprise-grade cybersecurity to work for your business? Contact Vertical IT at info@verticalitcorp.com or (888) 505-8215 today to learn more about our Next-Generation Anti-virus solution or to sign up for a complete security audit to find out exactly where your business stands.