Page 10 - BusinessWest June 23, 2021

Change the way you feel about I.T. Service
Problem Solved!
Call Today! 413.736.NEIT
• Managed IT Services • Backup/Disaster Recovery • Project Management • Cloud Solutions
www.northeastit.net • 170 Lockhouse Rd, Westfield, MA 01085
Given the sophistication and persistence of today’s cybercriminals, Joel Mollison says it’s only a matter of time before any organization falls victim to an attack.
Ostberg agreed. “People are taking the matter more seriously, and they’re taking me more seriously when I tell them they have to plan for cybersecurity incidents,” she said. “I’ve noticed an increase in concern, especially about ransomware, which can really cripple a business.
“The Massachusetts regulations and the advice I give my clients provide a lot of good ideas about ways to prevent or mitigate some of the risk that would be caused by some of the hacks we’re seeing,” she went on. “And it’s focused on building layers of prevention.”
At or near the top of any list of prevention measures is training, spe- cifically involving the detection of phishing e-mails, which comprise the entry point for most of the hacks that occur today, according to those we spoke with.
As they talked about these e-mails, they summoned some of those same adjectives as they tried to convey just how sophisticated they have become.
“The phishing is getting more elaborate, and the social engineer- ing that goes behind it is far more advanced than what we’ve seen in the past,” said Doug Morrison, practice director for the Development Operations team at Melillo. “It used to be that the e-mails were inten-
“The conversations have changed. In the past, there were certain people you could talk to until you were blue in the face, and it was purely a dollars-and-cents discussion: ‘you want me to spend how much in a firewall, or this piece of software?’ Now, it’s ‘what can we do?’”
tionally easy to sleuth out, because that way they could weed out the people they didn’t want; they wanted the people who were easily fooled to click on the link. But now, it’s getting very elaborate and very difficult to tell real e-mails from the fake e-mails.”
With this level of sophistication, Bianco said, it really is only a mat- ter of time before someone makes a mistake and opens the door for a cyberattacker. But training and knowing to be on alert and skeptical of everything remotely suspicious are still critical to help minimize such incidents.
“Know who you’re doing business with,” he said. “Trust an e-mail if it’s someone you’ve done business with in the past. And if it isn’t some- one you’ve done business with in the past, be skeptical of that; if you’re in question, send it over to your IT team, and let them take a look at it. If they see a bad e-mail, they can tell you immediately, ‘hey, we’ve seen
SUBMISSIONS OPEN UNTIL
Thursday August 5
AWARDS SHOW
Tuesday September 14
ADCLUB
OF WSTERN MASS
10 JUNE 23, 2021
FEATURE
:( :)
File Photo
BusinessWest