Protect against CEO email fraud

In this month’s update, we discuss why you need to upgrade your Anti-virus to detect advanced threats, protecting your business against CEO Fraud, a self quoting tool for migrating to Microsoft 365 and fun and games inside Intuitive IT.

June is always a time of reflection for us at Intuitive, as it would be for most businesses. 12 months ago most of us had just entered a second lockdown. Today, it appears some of us could be repeating history.

Regardless of whether the last 12 months were a financial success for you, it appears Covid-19 has hurt us one way or another and I feel for everyone out there. That said, our Intuitive family of clients, staff and vendors has transformed themselves and I applaud everyone’s resilience and ability to adapt. It seems these are traits that we’ll need to continue to use for the foreseeable future. Good luck to us all and may your 21-22 financial year be a prosperous one.

Change to IT Score – Anti-virus

Starting this month, we’ve adjusted the requirements for receiving full marks in the anti-virus (AV) category of your IT Score.

Previously an AV solution that was up-to-date, deployed across your fleet of computers and had the latest definitions was enough to get you full marks.

However, in recent months the threat landscape has changed significantly and this level of protection is no longer enough to protect your business. Threats are now so incredibly sophisticated that the AV solution must have a level of intelligence that can detect malware activity it hasn’t seen before. This can be loosely defined as Advanced Threat Detection.

In order to receive full marks in AV, your organisation must have a product that meets these requirements. Please review your latest report to find out if you are in need of an upgrade or feel free to reach out to discuss.

Tagging emails with ‘External’ tag

Hackers may send you an email that appears like it’s come from someone inside your organisation. For example, it can be made it look like an email sent from you to your accounts department. This is generally called “CEO Email Fraud”.

Why would they do something like this?

Generally, it’s to trick payroll into changing the account your salary is paid into, to an account the hacker controls. Or it could be reissuing invoices with the intent of having them paid into their own accounts. These emails are sent from servers that are external to your organisation and to the trained eye, can be detected.

But for busy staff members, they may miss these clues. So what can we do to help? Mark these emails as ‘external’!

For those clients that are using Google Workspaces to access your email via a browser (not Outlook), this feature is already enabled for you.

You’ll also notice this tagging also occurs on your Gmail app on your phone.

 

 

For those of you using Microsoft 365, this feature has recently been introduced and we’ll begin rolling it out to everyone in the coming weeks. Initially it is only available when you access your email via a browser or from the Outlook app on your phone.

Microsoft has indicated it will roll out the feature to the desktop Outlook application soon. In the meantime, if you are suspicious about an email and we’ve pushed this feature out to your business, view it on your phone or web browser to see if the External tag is set.

Microsoft 365 Migration Calculator

Speaking of Microsoft 365, in June we released an online calculator on our website to help price your migration from your old email system to our recommended platform.

By answering 5 questions (or in some cases only 3) you can find out the price to move your email hosting to what is now the industry standard for email. Yes, most of you have already moved across which is great, but for those of you that haven’t here’s an easy way to find out the cost.

You may also have friends in other businesses that are considering moving but don’t know what it would cost to migrate. Feel free to forward this email to them.

This tool complements our existing Dropbox Business migration calculator which is also our site.

In Intuitive news…

The end of the financial year also means it’s time for Intuitive IT’s second annual awards night. Last year, due to lockdown, we weren’t able to celebrate the end of the financial year with go-karts, rock climbing or one of the other activities we normally celebrate with.

Instead, we had a video call from the comfort of our own homes. A hamper of goodies was prepared and sent to each staff members house so we could nibble and sip our way through the awards night. This year, we hope to continue the tradition but this time in person. The question is, who will win?

Will Alex retain his title of Funniest team member or will Jim with his horrid jokes topple the pun-king?

Who can top Daniel’s great documentation from last year to take out the Wordsmith award?

Can Jack retain his crown of best customer service or will Michael claim the throne after getting so close last year?

The big question is, who will be the Employee of Year? Who has embodied the IIT values to take home the biggest prize of the night?

In addition, we’ll have a table tennis tournament and ship in a few arcade machines in true geek style. Thanks to Lou (as always) for organising us!

As always, reach out if you need anything. We’re here to help.

Happy End of Financial Year!