Businesses warned on winter phishing scams

Winter is phishing season, and organisations and individuals alike should be extra vigilant during the holidays. This is according to a new report from F5 Labs, which claims that fraud incidents in October, November, and December usually jump more than 50 per cent, compared to a yearly average. Most of the time, hackers and fraudsters impersonate big tech companies. In 70 per cent of incidents, it's tech companies that get impersonated. Out of that number, 58 per cent of attempts revolve around Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, Adobe, Dropbox and DocuSign. Even though experts will tell you that everyone has equal chance of being targeted, financial organisations are most frequently in the fraudsters' crosshairs. Thirteen of the top 20 fastest growing targets were financial organisations, with banks accounting for 55 per cent of these attacks. Five of those were major EU businesses.