host posted on November 07, 2009 11:40
Important FBI Security Warning for Small and Mid Sized Businesses, municipal governments, and school districts.
On November 3, 2009, the FBI released a warning about small and mid sized business scams that have netted, by some estimates, somewhere between 40 and 400 million dollars this year, alone. What is especially important about these scams is that they target small to mid size business who are not protected against electronic losses. So any loss is a significant loss.
In general, consumers have ten (10) days to report electronic thefts and then, consumers are often reimbursed for 100 percent of their losses. Small to mid size businesses are afforded no such reimbursement protection by their banks, and in the cases reported, even when the scams were discovered and reported early on, businesses and authorities were only able to recover small fractions of what was actually stolen, electronically. See:
What to do.
1. Secure your computer. These scams, right now, are only reported to target Windows machines, so in addition to the safe guards recommended by CERT as attached and found here:
aaacomputer.com recommends these actions:
2. Set up a separate, dedicated Windows machine. An additional effective method that we recommend to combat this significant threat is to configure and dedicate a separate physical computer in your office that is used only for company banking business and nothing else; no email, no web browsing, no work processing or anything else; just banking.
3. Install Microsoft Security Essentials software now on all Windows machines. And if you are not already using Windows One Care, then get rid of your McAfee, Norton, AVG or other anti virus software and download and install the new FREE and effective Microsoft Security Essentials software now, that will protect you against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software better than other products, here:
4. Set up and use a dedicated, secure Linux Machine, Linux Virtual Machine or Linux Boot CD for all banking. Other, more secure options are for aaacomputer.com LLC to install and configure a Linux virtual machine on one of your secure Windows machines, and then use this Linux virtual machine as needed, for business banking only. Or, we can configure a secure Linux Boot CD that can be used in a similar manner or even a separate dedicated Linux office machine. So far, no scams have been reported as being successful against machines running Linux, so Linux will add an additional layer of protection to your online banking now, and for the near future. This could change if Linux usage expands and the scammers begin to target Linux, but so far, this has not been reported.
Contact us for more information; we are computer security experts and can help you comply with HIPAA and/or any other federal or state laws that require data protection.
Bill