With the concept of e-commerce becoming more widespread and global than ever before, cybercriminals are beginning to target wealthy individuals with inadequate cybersecurity measures in their homes. In response, many of these wealthy individuals have hired trained investigators to visit their homes and review anything with an internet connection, including assistants’ personal devices. For an upfront charge of around $5,000, these at-home cyber reviews also track poor privacy and security settings and make sure internet connections are well protected. They will also install cybersecurity systems to safely secure online accounts.
Austin Berglas, head of K2 intelligence’s cyber investigations, explains that the classic cyber security breaches often occur “through a general info-extracting email fraud called ‘phishing’ or a targeted fraud called ‘spear phishing,’” which often extracts information via social media. Berglas also stated that this tends to happen to high net-worth individuals more than corporations and gives this story as an example: “A chief executive, known to be on vacation, sent an email to his company’s accountant, saying a lawyer would be contacting her shortly about a wire transfer that had to be done by end of day. A lawyer then emailed the accountant instructions to wire over $700,000 to a bank in China. The lawyer sent the appropriate letter of authorization, including the CEO’s signature over the company’s seal. The accountant did what she was told. When the CEO called later, regarding another matter, he learned of the wire. He never sent the original email in question.” In fact, the FBI has recently found that email compromises rose 270 percent from January 2015 to mid-August. In order to reduce the risk of this happening to you or your family, it is important to have different and complex passwords for each account, change passwords frequently and even install a two-step authentication to your accounts containing personal information.