3 Human Factors that Make Technical Support an IT Security Risk

Cyber criminals latched onto technical support a long time ago, seeing many possibilities for scams and attacks. Most recently, tech support scams to cold-sell support packages over the phone have been popular – according to the 2016 Internet Security Threat Report from Symantec, which also noted a 200 per cent increase in tech support scams overall in 2015 compared to 2014. Fake alerts on PCs try to get users to call a free phone number for assistance. At the other end of the line, a scammer tries to persuade users to install software to “fix problems”, software that in reality is malware, such as ransomware. But the real reasons for success with the scam are not technical at all. Read more