So you have a Nigerian prince in your emails who seems nice enough. He’s never been anything but polite, and from the looks of it, he has had a rough time lately. As it turns out, being a prince is not as lucrative as it sounds. He just needs $12,000 from you to make it all better.

You know how this story ends. You laugh it off because you know it’s a scam – you don’t know this guy, why would you ever give him money?

But what happens when someone you do know emails you out of the blue, needing some cash? Or if a coworker asks for access to a file? Or if someone you’re pretty sure you know sends you a link that you just have to click?

 Scam requests for W-2's

Numerous scams have been happening through emails. The scam consist of requests for W-2 information from individuals. The scam emails are designed to look like they was sent from a CEO or other excuitive member, asking for employees W-2 information.  The FBI and IRS have posted warnings about this criminal activity and have stated the volume of the scam emails have increased drastically. 

 

Already Victimized

These trends are practical things that will help you keep your network safer with improved defense-in-depth.

1. A move from being defensive to a more proactive approach to IT security, for instance application firewalls that actually work and are easy to deploy.
   
   
2. Machine learning that *works* spreads out to legacy endpoint security tools, and is able to do real-time payload analysis to prevent ransomware attacks.
3. You will finally get affordable and smart enough network traffic analysis tools that will show if your network has been penetrated, combined with:
4. Platforms that will show you understandable threat intelligence with analytics and reporting that will dramatically shorten the "dwell time" of hackers in your network.