Simulated phishing attempts are used by companies to gather a pulse on how susceptible their employees are to phishing attacks, which have skyrocketed during the COVID-19 epidemic; however, are these phishing tests successful in teaching people to recognize scam messages?

Cybercriminals have been capitalizing on the wave of fear brought on by the COVID-19 crisis through a vast increase in phishing attempts and spam. The number of detected phishing attacks has skyrocketed following lockdowns in February and March, making up 91.5% of detections for COVID-19-related cyber threats in April.

Secuvant, a leader in managed security and risk advisory services, today announced the addition of Jim Walker to Secuvant’s Executive Board supporting its growing cybersecurity client base in the Agriculture and Construction Equipment (AG/CE) industry.

To continue our path to becoming a global leader in providing strategic, white-glove security services to targeted markets and industries globally, Secuvant is pleased to announce partnerships with cybersecurity firms Netsurion and Arete IR. These partnerships supplement our best-in-class detection and response capabilities and will allow us to more deeply engage in building stronger business relationships with clients and focus extensively on meaningful value-added security services that reduce risk.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt the operations of businesses world-wide, we continue to monitor the cyber security and risk management landscape to remain at the forefront of changes in attack strategies from bad actors. Secuvant’s SOC team has been detecting and responding to cyber activities.

With social distancing and “stay at home” orders being enforced across the nation to contain the COVID-19 virus, many businesses across all sectors have adapted to a new lifestyle of working from home. This increase in digital dependence enhances the cyber risk that many SMBs now face as they become vulnerable to cyberattacks.

The COVID-19 or coronavirus pandemic has impacted the world in unforeseen ways. As cyberattacks continue to take advantage and exploit user’s fear, organizations should implement their incident response planning procedures and policies to keep the company and clients informed of business operations. Moreover, we address some cyber security best practices to communicate with staff.

As a new decade begins, a heightened concern over data privacy continues to cloud organizations across the world. The way organizations collect, store, and use customer data has come under scrutiny. Recent examples of data breaches include, the WaWa breach of over 850 of its locations exposing customers’ credit card information, and Microsoft’s customer support database of 280 million records was exposed unprotected on the web.

Don Ainslie, a senior security leader with over 35 years of experience, has joined Secuvant as the EVP of Risk Management and Professional Services. In his role, Don will focus on developing and implementing strategies to assist Secuvant’s clients to mitigate cybersecurity and information/data security risks in culturally diverse, politically sensitive, and strategically challenging environments.