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IP DECT / Data Protection
Data theft is one of the greatest
threats to an SMB’s finances and
reputation, yet only 58% of SMBs
report being concerned about loss of
company or customer information.*
Such nonchalance is highly unwise
considering that in the past year, cyber
attacks have cost SMBs £3.37m in lost
revenue and damaged hardware.**
With only a third of SMBs having IT
security in place, it is not surprising that
12.7% of SMBs have had personal/bank
details or money stolen and 8.5% have
been hacked. One popular method of
gaining vital data is the use of fraudulent
emails that prompt employees to click on
links or reset passwords. Here are four of
the most common:
1. Your account will be closed within
48 hours if you do not respond.
The most common fraudulent
messages targeted at SMBs are
designed to appear as if they have
come from financial institutions. Our
SMB Market Landscape Report
shows
that 56.9% of SMBs have received
fraudulent emails asking for money,
36.8% have received fake tax rebate
emails and 12.3% have been directed
to a fake government web page. Less
than a third were confident that they
could spot a fake website.
2. A secure message is waiting for you,
click here to read.
Many spam emails use this format,
often beginning with generic phrases
such as ‘Dear customer’. Replying to
these can be avoided by remembering
that legitimate sources will know
employees’ real names. Only 43% of
SMBs use spam filters which will block
many of these emails.
3. Please reset your online banking
password.
From January to April, when payments
to HMRC are at their highest, cyber
criminals send a higher volume of
fraudulent emails and malware. A
common tactic is to send messages
posing as the HMRC, unsurprising since
only 57.7% of SMBs surveyed reported
being able to spot a fake tax email.
4. Click the link below to gain access
to your account.
A popular method of stealing company
information is a process called ‘click
jacking’, which directs people to click
on links that redirect them to harmful
or fake websites where personal data
is collected. According to our research,
only 30.5% of SMBs would think twice
about clicking on a link directing them
to the HMRC site.
With over half of SMBs regularly opening
emails from unknown sources, it is vital
that they take IT security more seriously.
An antivirus solution should be installed
on all devices and staff should be
educated to avoid email fraud.
www.avg.com
Hi sucker!
*Statistics cited in this article are from the
Opinion Matters’Working Online survey of 603
UK SMBs, commissioned by AVG in March 2012.
The report is available on request, please email:
** Figure based on £1.18m from replacing
damaged hardware and £2.19m in lost revenue
as revealed in the SMB Market Landscape
Report commissioned by AVG and conducted
by GfK among 1000 UK & US SMBs in August
2011. Download the full report at: http://
download.avg.com/filedir/news/AVG_SMB_
Market_Landscape_Report_2011.pdf
Mike Foreman, Senior Vice President of Global Sales at AVG
Technologies, explains how to spot a fraudulent email
three handsets around the house that display all numbers
so you can see if the call is coming from the office, a private
line or the PSTN, which makes it easy to manage calls,” he
said.
“The phones are set up so that you can define the call
routing each time you make a call. You can set a default so
all calls go via VoIP or the PSTN, or each time you make a
call you just dial the number and put a star at the end and
it will go over the PSTN. You can also use the PSTN as a
fall-over,” he said.
Gigaset DECT IP base stations can also be used by
customers that don’t have their own PBX, but use a hosted
service from suppliers like Spitfire.
“A business with a distributed workforce like
Business
Info’s
could have N300IPs in each office all connected back
to a hosted SIP provider, for example Spitfire. You all have
your own numbers within the
Business Info
dial plan and
make calls by VoIP onto the network. If each of the devices is
also connected to the local PSTN, each of you could print a
landline number as well as the company one.”
The DECT advantage
Of course, IP DECT is not the only cordless communications
solution. Other options are to integrateWiFi-enabled
mobile phones or tablets with the company PBX or to
deploy dedicatedWiFi handsets. For Walshe, neither option
measures up to IP DECT.
“A lot of it’s down to the handset,” he said. “If we look
at handset costs, the Gigaset A510 has a list price of circa
£35 whereas the starting price for aWiFi handset is about
£100. If all you are doing is making, receiving and transferring
calls, you are paying a lot for aWiFi capability. And if aWiFi
handset gets dropped, it’s expensive to replace. It’s a lot
easier to register a DECT handset than aWiFi handset and
because DECT operates in its own frequency band, it is less
prone to interference and is more secure. The other thing is
battery life: on standby, the battery of a DECT phone will last
way in excess of 150 hours and usage time is 10 hours or
more, but WiFi drains battery life, so the talk time is reduced
significantly,” he said.
He added: “We recently did a site survey for an oriental
food importer in the Midlands that has a warehousing facility
and wholesale/retail sales outlet. They are spread over a
large site and don’t allow staff to use mobile phones during
working hours: a) because if the mobile phone is connected
to the PBX it is expensive; and b) because if the operator
of a forklift truck drops a mobile phone and it smashes the
replacement cost would be too high. The replacement cost
of DECT is lower and you can set up the handsets so that
they can only be used for internal usage ensuring there is
no abuse of company facilities. And the coverage of a DECT
multi-cell is better so there shouldn’t be any interference and
connectivity issues.”
www.gigaset.com/pro