By Will Jones
Cybercrime has evolved. There are preventions, but, unfortunately, there is no cure. Businesses are involuntarily involved in an arms race where cyberattacks keep coming—every 39 seconds, according to a study from the University of Maryland—new methods appear and disappear, and some of the defenses become moot the moment they become effective.
Remembering a new password every 90 days or shredding handwritten notes with sensitive information at the end of the workday is a thing of the past. No one is going through your trash anymore. Instead, they’re trying all the unlocked digital doorways, windows and entry points you didn’t even know existed to break into your business.
Independent agents grow their business by researching prospects, checking expiration dates, quoting and sending proposals. It’s all part of a day’s work. Well, guess what? Cybercriminals are doing exactly the same thing. They’re testing your door handles, looking for low-hanging fruit to make a cool $812,360—the average ransomware payout in 2022, according to Sophos’s “State of Ransomware 2022″ report. Even worse is that in 2023, ransomware attacks increased by 37%, according to the “2023 ThreatLabz State of Ransomware Report” by Zscaler.
“Insurance carriers each have their own agent portals with different requirements on how you access them, so it’s not unusual for several people in an agency to share credentials to make it easier,” explains Alvito Vaz, business manager, ID Federation, who recalls being in an agency and witnessing one agent shout the shared login across the office to another team member so they could continue to service clients without interruptions. He also encountered one agency that kept all their passwords in a shared online file but mistakenly put the file on the internet instead of the intranet.
